thelesterlee
Shout out to LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry for leading the 2024 Team USA Olympic squad but this is their farewell tour. I don’t expect to see any of those 3 men playing basketball 4 years from now so we’ll have to re-tool the whole roster.
I want to start by saying no one on the Knicks, please. By 2028, Tom Thibodeau will have the Villanova boys refreshing their emails first thing every morning, tirelessly checking to see if their doctors found ACL, MCL, PCL, UCL donors. By 2028, Thibs will have them wheel chairing up and down Broadway.
Anyway, here are 7 players i’d love to see on Team USA for the 2028 Olympics:
1. Ja Morant
This feels like the perfect opportunity to premiere the newest hot take I’ve concocted when the weed pen had me in the figure four leg lock.
Ja Morant will be the MVP next season after the Grizzlies win the West (and voters don’t want to keep giving Jokic every MVP even though they should.)
An early season-ending injury robbed Morant his opportunity to prove he’d grown up.
He’s sitting at home watching Anthony Edwards replace him in the family photos. Ja might break Rudy Gobert’s wrist next season, dunking his balls through his cranium because the T-Wolves are the opps now.
By 2028, Ja Morant could fully transform himself from the black sheep into the face of the league. The self-sabotage is in remission.
The Ja Morant documentary will make your eyes tear up.
2. Zion Williamson
Imagine: Zion Williamson as a role player against vastly inferior competition.
Less responsibility, and no pressure to be the best player on the team.
All he has to do is randomly explode, bending laws of physics, swatting basketballs into the concession stands and dunking from the Olympic logo.
We need to bring Duke Zion back.
I still can’t get over this ridiculous block from Zion at Duke. pic.twitter.com/QwxozsX0Dc
— . (@TheNBACentral) March 20, 2020
Derrick White could never.
3. Jimmy Butler
Team USA teams are always at their flyest when they have cool OGs on the team like Carmelo Anthony in 2016 or Larry Bird in 1992. I’m realizing this is for the 2028 Olympics and Jimmy Butler will be 38 in 4 years so we’re going to not-so-quietly pivot.
3. Cam Whitmore
I cannot stress enough how great I believe Cam Whitmore is capable of becoming. A potential perennial All-Star stands before us and by 2028, he should be looking at All-NBA votes.
(Or he’ll never be in a situation where he’s asked to be any more than a role player because he’s already like, the 6th option of a Rockets team full of guys trying to establish their place in the NBA but maybe Cam gets included in a trade and gets his chance to prove he’s Him.)
4. Cade Cunningham
I have no fucking idea if Cade Cunningham is a good basketball player.
He’s always either injured or he’s sharing the court with 4 guys who wouldn’t get picked to play at the local YMCA courts.
How many dead, unchanged lightbulbs do you think are stuck in the ceilings of the Pistons team facility? Dim ass rooms.
Cade Cunningham has to change his phone’s brightness when he enters the building. No one’s franchise player should have to be thinking about that. Decision fatigue is real.
5. Jaylen Brown
Jaylen spent the summer yapping, sending subliminal shots at some imaginary force dedicated to keeping a gold medal out of his hands. Is that what Project 2025 is?
Can we just get Brown on the team so we don’t have to deal with this again in 4 years?
I cannot pretend to care about the intricacies of the Team USA selection process.
Every NBA player finds ways to complain.
Whether they get their message out via Shams tweets or they go on a podcast or go on their own podcast—it’s become part of the entire NBA experience, for better or worse.
But Jaylen Brown perceives every inconvenience as an attack on the African diaspora as if he isn’t literally the highest-paid player in the 75-year history of the league.
No one’s out to get you, Jaylen. And if they are, I’m sure you can afford the best security possible. You can afford everything.
6. LaMelo Ball
I recognize this is the third point guard I’ve said should be on this roster but Ball throwing an oop up to Ja over a 7-foot-13 refugee will shift the culture.
It’s about to look like your most annoying co-worker’s front yard/pick-up truck come Summer 2028. American flags as far as the eye can see. Like from sea to shining sea, for real.
LaMelo rolling up to each game with a different colored Lamborghini before he pulls up from 40, taunting the opposing guard who just learned to play basketball 3 months earlier because the team needed 12 players on the roster.
7. Bronny James
Sports media could eat for weeks if LeBron somehow found a way to get his spoiled ass son on the Olympic team. That story is trending all day on both Fox Sports AND Fox News. Skip Bayless may finally tweet a slur.
But you have to think about growing the NBA. Bronny James has one of the biggest names in the sports world. He has to be on the Olympic roster. Think about the ratings.
The WNBA is most likely shutting its doors by the end of the summer because they didn’t put Caitlin Clark on the Team USA roster.
I hate Stephen A. Smith.
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Who do you think should be on the 2028 Olympics team? Leave a comment below. Respond on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Or shoot me an email at Deadseriousmailbag@gmail.com. Let’s chat, bay-beeeee.
