SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico: The team that USA Basketball put together for its last two qualifying games for the FIBA AmeriCup knew it would only be together for a week.
The players made the most of this time.
Ra’Shad James scored 21 points and the United States finished the AmeriCup standings with a 6-0 record, beating Mexico 96-75 on Saturday. Brandon Bass scored 12 points for the Americans, who beat the Mexicans 33-12 from the 3-point range.
“Any player would want to be part of a situation like this,” James said. “You had guys who bought into the system very quickly … a disinterested group of guys.”
Joe Johnson finished with 11 points, nine rebounds and seven assists for the United States, William Davis added 10 points and Isaiah Thomas, who was looking for an NBA comeback, scored nine points in 20 minutes.
AmeriCup is the championship for the nations of the FIBA America region; the United States has won it seven times on nine previous occasions, and entered its two games in San Juan knowing that it had already seated the September 2022 tournament. However, it ended up beating the Bahamas and Mexico by 37 combined points in these games.
Edgar Garibay finished with 19 points and nine rebounds for Mexico.
The United States soon turned Saturday’s game into an escape.
Mexico stood between 14 and 10 after the first six minutes, and it was the last time they had any realistic hope. The Americans continued with a 13-0 run to advance to 17 at the end of the first quarter, Dakota Mathias made a triple with 3:13 left in the half to get the 53-24 and the result did not go never to be questioned again. .
“We really represent something bigger than us and we’ve done it,” said U.S. coach Joe Prunty. “We talked about how we had a standard to maintain.”
Prunty was also excited about how disinterested the Americans were, even quoting Thomas for returning a few minutes on Saturday so others could play more.
“The way they represented each other, the way they represented Team USA, was an amazing job. [USA Basketball men’s national team director] Sean Ford and the staff form a team like this, ”Prunty said.
The United States improved to 11-1 against Mexico in the FIBA or FIBA Americas senior level games.
It took exactly one year for the United States to qualify for the AmeriCup; the Americans opened the process by winning 83-70 in San Juan, Puerto Rico on February 20, 2020, and this would be the closest game they had in the six-game series.
The coronavirus pandemic forced the last two sets of two-game ranking windows to form bubbles, first in Indianapolis in November, when the United States got its AmeriCup bed and now those games in San Juan. Mike Fratello coached the United States in the first two windows, Prunty took over those games, and the Americans put together three different lists for the three games.
The AmeriCup classification was the first step in a long process towards creating the fields for the 2023 Basketball World Cup and the 2024 Paris Olympics. Only host nations (Philippines, Japan and Indonesia for the upcoming World Cup and France for the 2024 Olympics) automatically qualify for these tournaments. All other nations have to graduate through a number of other tournaments, such as the AmeriCup, to achieve these fields.