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It's hard to believe, but USA Basketball is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
“Fifty years is a big deal,” said Diana Taurasi, one of the greatest players in U.S. basketball history.
No, it's not the staying power of America's basketball governing body that's surprising.
The U.S. women's national team has won seven consecutive Olympic gold medals and hasn't lost since 2006. The men's national team has won four consecutive Olympic gold medals. USAB has a four-year budget of $100 million, the largest of any national basketball federation, and the NBA and Nike are its two largest business partners.
The problem is, this year, 2024 only USAB is 50 years old?
Didn't the U.S. men's basketball team win every Olympic gold medal in basketball from the 1936 Berlin Games, when basketball was first included in the Olympic Games, until 1968? You had players like Bill Russell, Big O, The Logo, and others, right? That was over 50 years ago, wasn't it?
“It's a pretty complicated but fascinating history,” said Craig Miller, who served as director of communications for the United States Basketball Association for 31 years and was hired in 1990, two years before the formation of the “Dream Team.”
Speaking of anniversaries, the one USA Basketball is celebrating this year is one of convenience as well as bureaucracy. The Colorado Springs, Colorado-based organization was founded in 1974. Articles of incorporation were filed in 1975, and the name was changed to USA Basketball in 1989.
This year is also an Olympic year, with the 2024 Paris Games scheduled to be held, and it is a year of high interest, with the men's team expected to be a dream team and the women's team aiming for an Olympic record eighth consecutive victory. Thursday marks exactly 50 days since the opening ceremony on the Seine.
So now is a good time for USAB to celebrate its 50th anniversary, with not only will the men's and women's teams be competing for two gold medals in traditional basketball, but they'll also be competing for a gold medal in a three-on-three game, known as 3×3, with the U.S. women as the defending champions and the men as the gold medal contenders.
Until the 1972 Olympics, the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) was in charge of selecting US players for international competition (women's basketball wasn't an Olympic sport until 1976), but the AAU split throughout the 1960s, and FIBA eventually stripped the organization of its authority and forced it to merge with its rivals.
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In 1974, this new organization was formed and recognized by FIBA, with the long name of “National Amateur Basketball Association.” This name would last until the 1988 Olympics, another aggressive move by FIBA that would change basketball in America and around the world.
Following instructions from Secretary General Boris Stankovic, FIBA member countries voted to allow “professional” athletes to compete in Olympic competitions.
“The United States, by the way, voted against it,” said Russ Granik, a former deputy commissioner of the NBA under the late David Stern and executive director of the United States Basketball Association from 1996 to 2000.
In the 1988 Olympics, the U.S. men's team, featuring college players, won the bronze medal, and the U.S. women's team, featuring stars who played professionally overseas, won the gold medal, but FIBA did not allow “professionals” to participate in events organized by FIBA, including the Olympics. The problem was that professional leagues were considered “club sports” in some European and South American countries, so players were still classified as amateurs.
The NBA was starting to see a trickle of foreign players, and those countries wanted their players to be able to represent them in the Olympics (to compete against Eastern European countries taking advantage of the “club sports” loophole).
Big East commissioner Dave Gavitt ran the National Basketball Association in the late 1980s, and as Granik says, the universities didn't want to lose influence, so Gavitt voted against it, but Gavitt, who died in 2011, also knew the rule change would pass, and it did, and he had already approached the NBA about a merger.
The ball was now in the hands of the NBA, and Stern, with guidance from Granik, had to decide: 1) Would the NBA allow players (under contract) to participate in FIBA events, and 2) If the answer to the first question was yes, what would that look like for Team USA?
“We decided if we were going to do this, we were going to do it absolutely best and put the best NBA team on the court and we asked the NBA owners for approval,” Granick said.
The NBA's involvement meant that significant changes were on the way, starting with a new name and logo. Granick said Gavitt was already working on the name change, with “USA Basketball” replacing the ABA of USA.
The process of selecting players for the U.S. team was also changed: the NBA, namely Stern, Granick, and Rod Thorn, then the NBA's vice president of basketball operations, insisted on selecting the team, and Granick joined the new USA Basketball executive committee.
It's time to assemble the dream team.
Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing celebrate after winning the gold medal against Croatia at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. The “Dream Team” elevated men's basketball to a new level of international prowess. (John Gaps/Associated Press)
“The answer was always the same from every player,” Granick said. “It was, 'I'm a little skeptical, but if we can put together the team you're talking about,' Nobody wanted to be the only good player on the team. But they all said, 'If we can put together a team of really good players, I'm in.'”
Granik said he and Thorn made cold calls to NBA stars, including arguably the greatest basketball star on the planet, Michael Jordan, the former general manager of the Chicago Bulls who drafted Jordan in 1984.
“Rod came back after talking to Mike and said to me, 'If all the other guys we mentioned are in favor, Michael is in favor, but we don't want anyone to know for a while,'” Granick said. “After that, we had a lot of trouble lining up with sponsors, but we were told Michael was ready to play from day one.”
Recruiting wasn't the only challenge in assembling a Dream Team that featured not only Jordan but also other big stars such as Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley and Scottie Pippen.
The NBA had to look after its sponsors and prevent companies that weren't affiliated with the league from appearing connected by sponsoring the Dream Team. According to a 1992 report in the Los Angeles Times, 15 global brands paid USA Basketball $1 million each to be called official sponsors.
USAB also had to significantly upgrade its travel, lodging, and security facilities for a team that was no longer made up of college players, and while new stars (such as Jordan) had individual sponsorship deals through Nike, they had to strike their own deals with apparel companies.
The U.S. women also needed a change, but when the Dream Team launched in 1992, there was no professional women's league in the U.S. Coincidentally, while the Dream Team quickly re-established the U.S. men's team as the unquestioned best international team in sports, the U.S. women's team finished a disappointing third at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
When they placed third again in 1994, this time at the FIBA World Championships, USA Basketball realized they had a problem.
“The impression after both failures was that the players didn't spend enough time together, that they didn't really know each other,” former U.S. women's national team coach Carol Curran said. “The powers that be were gnashing their teeth, wanting to make sure it never happened again.”
Prior to 1995, Curran had served on and even chaired the USAB women's team selection committee, but after consecutive bronze medal wins at major international tournaments, USAB and the NBA partnered to create a national “program” with women's teams, Curran said. In Colorado Springs, Curran took on the full-time job. In her new role, she flew to Russia during friendlies to ask U.S. pro players if they were willing to give up their overseas salaries to train year-round with USAB.
The NBA agreed to fund training, and two more professional leagues were to be established in the United States: the American Basketball League and the WNBA.
“At the time, it was like, 'There's no guarantee you'll make the Olympic team, but of course you'll need to put in the work to get there,'” Curran recalled of the pitch to the players. “We got a positive response from the players. The NBA was interested in marketing and wanted to see how it would go as a test case, and USA Basketball was interested in doing what it took to invest the time and energy to become a better team.”
Since then, American women have not lost at the Olympics.
“We don't look at it as a four-year thing,” said Diana Taurasi, a member of the U.S. Olympic team that won five gold medals. “We look at it as a career.” (Gregory Schamus/Getty Images)
Since the 1996 Atlanta Olympic cycle, the U.S. women's national team has never changed its policy of regular team training throughout the year, with its top players competing in both the Olympics and FIBA tournaments every year.
“I think we're taking this really seriously,” said Taurasi, who is seeking her sixth Olympic gold medal this summer and has won three of her four World Cup appearances. “We don't look at this as a four-year thing. We look at it as a career.”
Although the United States Basketball Association has overcome some obstacles, a confluence of factors, including increased competition due to the global popularity of basketball, particularly for the men's team, sparked by the Dream Team, and occasional disinterest from U.S. NBA players, among others, has led to disappointing results at the 2004 Olympics and in the 2019 and 2023 FIBA World Cups.
But with the Paris Olympics fast approaching, U.S. basketball is ranked No. 1 in the world at every level (high school, college and professional) for men and women, and No. 2 in 3×3 for both men and women.
USAB's largest source of revenue comes from its licensing and marketing contract with the NBA, which is worth millions of dollars a year, including $15.5 million for the last Olympics in 2021, and is due for renewal at the end of the year.
Nike, the exclusive apparel and footwear provider for USA Basketball since 2006, is part of a marketing agreement between USAB and the NBA and also sponsors the USA Federation's youth programs, which include an extensive coaching licensing and education curriculum and numerous local tournaments.
USA Basketball fields national teams that compete in the Olympics and World Cups, as well as the tough and lesser known World Cup Qualifiers, AmeriCups and Pan American Games. At the amateur level, USA Basketball competes in the U19 and U17 World Cups, the FIBA Americas Championships in the U18 and U16 age groups, the Youth Olympic Games, co-hosts the Nike Hoop Summit and has a robust 3×3 program.
According to the most recent available public records, in 2022, USA Basketball spent about $14 million on its youth programs, 3×3 programs and the women's national team, which won the FIBA World Cup in Australia in September of that year.
“Most people recognize us for our big-name players and our work with FIBA and the Olympics, but we're much more than that,” said Jim Tooley, CEO of the USA Basketball Association since 2001. “There are many different sides to USA Basketball.”
That's 50 years worth.
— AthleticBen Pickman of contributed to this story
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(Illustration above: Daniel Goldfarb / AthleticPhotos: Tim Clayton/Corbis/Getty Images, David Madison/Getty Images)
