Will basketball go to World Cup model?

[admin]

Mark Cuban made some good points after Paul George's injury. He's obviously biased as an NBA owner considering the risk teams have when their players participate, but I more or less agree with him.

Will there be enough of a response from the NBA to change the current model? Moving to a one every 4 years "World Cup" of basketball would be pretty fun. Maybe make the Olympics amateur again?

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/11301 ... ompetition

[Dew]

Until the players are told not to participate, the added exposure and benefits of being on Team USA far eclipse the risk. Maybe George's injury changes that perception. Don't they already have basketball in the Olympics every 4 years? Do we need another tournament?

[Chalmers0]

I don't understand ANY of the reasoning behind why players wouldn't play in international competition due to injury concerns. Do people think these players that aren't involved in the competitions just sit at home? These guys play basketball games on a daily basis during the off-season, whether it's a local open gym or an international competition. Paul George's injury could have happened at any open gym as well. A lot of the same arguments were thrown around when people thought Remy may have tore his ACL a few weeks back at a summer league game. Injuries like that aren't preventable, the only reason that it stirs up all of this controversy on whether players should participate or not is because of it being televised/widely watched. I just don't see any added "risk" by a player playing in international competition.

[aughnanure]

If they ever do, they're going to have to figure out a way to shorten the season. November (with pre-season in October) to late June is ridiculous. Absolutely no need for 82 freaking games nor every playoff round to be a 7 game series.

[DudeAnon]

I have for a while thought that the NBA needs to be 50 games and mlb 120 games. Will never happen though. Money/stat legacy etc.

[stever20]

We may have started to see an answer tonight when Kevin Durant pulled out of the team for this summer.... Going to be very interesting to see the next few years- I think the George injury is a real sea change quite frankly, and we're never going to see it be remotely close to what we've seen the last 22 years...

Wouldn't be shocked at all if we find out that Oklahoma City put pressure on Durant to pull out.