USA Basketball 2014 World Cup: Toughest Challenge Still to Come

USA Basketball 2014 World Cup: Toughest Challenge Still to Come (Photo via usab.com)

Team USA has had a fairly easy stroll in to the 2014 FIBA World Cup quarter finals. Aside from a few slow starts, they have managed to overwhelm every team they have faced, with their smallest margin of victory being 21. However, anyone that knows anything about USA basketball knows that this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Unlike other sports such as soccer or tennis, American athletes tend to dominate on the basketball court. Even without stars such as LeBron James and Kevin Durant, this year’s World Cup roster is still good enough to make it to the gold medal game. That begs the question, is there any team that can hang with the Red, White, and Blue in this tournament?

Perhaps the only challenge that lies ahead for Team USA is a potential gold medal match against Spain. Their roster is headlined by many familiar faces including Ricky Rubio, Serge Ibaka, and both Gasol brothers. Stephen Curry talked about the possibility of facing tougher talent in this year’s tournament.

“I mean you want to be tested and see how you do under pressure but I think the fact that we’ve played well and gotten better every single game, we can be happy with that and know that we’re prepared to execute any situation just because of the focus we’ve had,” Curry told LetsGoWarriors.com after Team USA practice, “We haven’t taken any team lightly, we haven’t been lazy [or] taken anything for granted along the way, so we’re pretty much prepared for anything.”

Curry and Team USA will be in action again today when they face off against Slovenia in a quarter final match-up. Team USA played Slovenia in their final tune-up game where they earned a 101-71 victory against Goran Dragic and the rest of the Slovenian squad.