Jaylen Brown of the Celtics and Julius Randle of the Knicks are the latest additions to the USA Basketball training camp roster for the FIBA World Cup, tweets Shams Charania of The Athletic.
They will help to restock the camp after a series of high-profile withdrawals in the past week. Tobias Harris was the latest big name to turn down a shot at making the World Cup team, joining Anthony Davis, James Harden, Bradley Beal, CJ McCollum and Eric Gordon. Decisions are expected soon from Damian Lillard and Kevin Love.
Brown struggled somewhat while adjusting to a reserve role last season, but still put up numbers similar to his breakthrough campaign of 2017/18, averaging 13.0 points and 4.2 rebounds in 74 games. At 22, he is part of the young foundation in Boston.
Randle signed with New York after posting a career-high 21.4 PPG in his lone season with New Orleans. The 24-year-old is also a reliable rebounder, averaging 8.7 per night with the Pelicans.
The changes are transforming Team USA from a star-filled squad into a younger group similar to the team that captured the World Cup gold medal in 2010, Charania notes.
nothing against brown but isnt there a better player out there or all the other SF dont want to play. but brown is a good defender so there that
I think this will help brown out to get him sort of ready for this upcoming year so I’m glad he was chosen. by the way he plays SG
He plays sg probably because of the depth at sf. But he is a SF/sg
Jaylen Brown is a renaissance man without peer in the NBA.
Good for them. They should still be good enough to win this tournament… it’s a good experience for these second and third tier guys.
It’s going to be just like the Olympics in the late 90s / early 2000s. Superstars will stop going until the US loses, then the next time we will have a new “Dream Team” for USA Basketball to market once again.
4th Celtics player added to the roster… if all 4 wind up playing in the tournament it could be a really great experience for them and a (needed) boost to their confidence. I mean Kemba really doesn’t need any experience but Tatum, Smart and Brown could all really benefit from the experience (and winning – if they are able to)