Yes, we’re going to crown a world champion* at the end of this thing, but the beauty of the 2023 FIBA World Cup, I’ve found, lies in the small joys of watching basketball played just beyond one’s typical purview. It’s the perfect context to enjoy a player like Japan’s naturalized star Josh Hawkinson, who is Washington State’s all-time leading rebounder and plays as if Al Jefferson slipped screens and were retrofitted to a 2023 standard of big-man play without giving up his baby hooks. It’s a great time for your nonexistent school pride to rekindle ever so briefly as you discover that the Philippines’ second-leading scorer, Dwight Ramos, went to your alma mater for a few years. It’s a perfect time to discover that Kyle Anderson’s legal name in China is Li Kaier. And what better time is there to recognize the incredible story of South Sudan, the newest independent nation in the world, which won its very first World Cup game led by 2023 G League MVP Carlik Jones?
With the first round of group play in the rearview and elimination rounds ahead, let’s celebrate some of the highlights—big and small—from the first week of the 2023 FIBA World Cup.
The Adaptation of Rondae Hollis-Jefferson
No matter what happens in the rest of the tournament, the most surreal moment of the World Cup already has been sealed. It can’t possibly get any more bizarre than witnessing thousands of fans at Manila’s Mall of Asia Arena celebrate Rondae Hollis-Jefferson’s run as the star of the Jordan national basketball team by chanting “Kobe!” Call it an associative bias, an optical illusion, a fever dream—I’ll call it a good enough excuse to rhapsodize about one of my favorite unheralded NBA role players after he morphed into a legend for 96 hours.
The entomologists—bug scientists, for those of you who didn’t have niche ambitions as a 7-year-old—call it morphological mimicry. As a survival adaptation, animals can slowly develop structural resemblances to other species in an effort to gain advantages afforded to the model species. It’s been a couple of seasons since Hollis-Jefferson last played in the NBA—gone are his braids and facial hair. He’s also shed 15 pounds after years of playing as an undersized big in the NBA. He’d focused on defense his entire life, but after his time on the other side of the world as the heralded NBA import, his priorities on the floor have changed in proportion to the expectations. His identity as an energy tweener in the NBA no longer served him when, in South Korea and the Philippines, he was expected to be a star. RHJ had 29 points, 14 rebounds, and six assists in the series-clinching Game 6 of the 2023 Philippine Basketball Association Finals in April, when he won his first professional basketball championship. He’s adapted not just his physique but also a more Mamba-esque economy of motion (the bug scientists call that locomotor mimicry). Wearing no. 24, standing 6-foot-6, slimmed down even beyond his college weight, and even possessing never-before-seen confidence in both his ballhandling and his pull-up game, he’s looked like the spitting image of late-career Kobe—only left-handed.
Developing a silhouette like Kobe’s isn’t enough to completely recontextualize one’s game—or is it? In his three games with the Jordan team, RHJ has pulled off moves I’ve never seen him even attempt, dating back to his Arizona days: a pull-up 3-pointer out of an evasive spin dribble; a turnaround wrong-footed mid-post fadeaway over current Lakers phenom Austin Reaves (not saying he did, but if the spirit of Kobe were to touch anyone, it would definitely be to momentarily embarrass a current Lakers player). He played more minutes than any other player in the tournament’s first-round stage and trailed only Luka Doncic in both points and free throws made and attempted per game—perhaps a friendly whistle induced by borrowed charisma. Whether this aberrational performance will earn Hollis-Jefferson another shot at the NBA remains to be seen, but maybe it’s enough for it to be a reminder that it’s never too late to make a change—to see yourself in a different light.
FIBA Coach Cams Forever
Bless Thomas Walkup, pride of Texas, for forcing Greek head coach Dimitrios Itoudis to speak English in team huddles. Just an incredible, Tim Robinson–level evacuation of id.
Team Canada Has Finally Arrived
Canada has been the best team in the tournament thus far; its staggering overall point differential in the first round of group play bears that out (plus-111 across three games, with Team USA’s plus-103 a close second). But it’s been another quality of the team that has caught my attention early on: Canada’s positively suffocating third quarters, when it’s outscoring opponents by an average of 14 points.
It’s been nearly a decade since the Warriors first cemented their place in basketball’s popular imagination with their 2014-15 championship. One of the biggest lessons they’ve learned in the ensuing years? Winning teams win the third quarter. Since that 2014-15 season, every team that has won a championship (outside of the 2020 Lakers) has been top five in third-quarter net rating. The prime Curry years produced some of the best third-quarter teams the league has ever seen—a confluence of the Warriors’ all-world offensive engine and malleable defense that could quickly internalize savvy halftime adjustments.
It’s a bit like the formula Canada’s working with in Asia. Defensively, Canada’s procession of versatile power wings and unforeseen defensive maven Kelly Olynyk (to say nothing of his Arvydas Sabonis impression on the other end) have set the standard for the entire field of play. From there, it’s been all Shai.
The 13 third-quarter points in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s World Cup debut against France were the initial eye-opener, but his 16 third-quarter points against Latvia four days later—in a game in which Canada was trailing by double digits for much of the first half—felt like confirmation of his status as the best player in the tournament this side of Doncic. And he’s done it by being himself—with movement in unique time signatures, smooth hesitations and side steps, and a midrange shooting touch so soft it verges on fragile. He has become the answer to the question that tens of basketball fans around the world have been asking for years now: What if you built a global basketball superstar entirely out of Shaun Livingston’s 20-point performance in Game 1 of the 2016 NBA Finals?
It’s been an impressive run thus far for Canada, and especially for new head coach Jordi Fernandez, who’s stepped up at the right time to shepherd an emergent titan in the international game. With apologies to Darko Rajakovic, Fernandez has solidified himself as the most important basketball coach in Canada right now, if only for this incredible bit of CanCon:
On the Shoulders of KAT
When the Dominican Republic started the World Cup 3-0, Karl-Anthony Towns officially made it past the first round of a basketball competition for the first time since 2015, when Kentucky lost to Wisconsin in the Final Four. I wish this weren’t true.
Jokes aside, the two upcoming games in Group I will be among the most important KAT’s played in his career thus far. There has never been a question of Towns’s talent—he’s been one of the most skilled players in the world for years—but he’s seldom had opportunities like the one before him, as a team leader in do-or-die scenarios, and even fewer when he’s come out on top. The DR’s point differential is the lowest among all undefeated teams in the tournament thus far, and they’ll soon have to face two extremely balanced attacks from Puerto Rico and Serbia. It’ll be downright impossible for the DR to pull off more upsets against stiffer competition if KAT continues to shoot 40 percent from the field, but having the best player on the court will always give you a chance. And who knows? Maybe this could also be the breakthrough Towns needs to turn his NBA fortunes around.
A Random Shout-Out to the Georgia National Team
It might be the khinkali craving talking, but Georgia has been one of my favorite teams in the tournament thus far. The best playmakers on the team are all 6-foot-9 and taller: Sandro Mamukelashvili was one of my favorite prospects in the 2021 NBA draft; Goga Bitadze never quite caught on with the Pacers and Magic, but he still has a rare blend of size, touch, and vision; and Tornike Shengelia, the national team’s leading scorer, had a cup of coffee in the league a decade ago and has since transformed himself from Nathan Fielder to Roman Reigns.
Georgia has scored the fewest points of all teams that advanced to the second round of group play and finds itself in arguably the most competitive group, alongside Slovenia, Germany, and Australia. But I will relish at least two more games of Mamukelashvili getting to be the big guard he was always meant to be.
Austin Reaves: WORLDSTAR!
Just last week, I noted the massive opportunity before Reaves at the World Cup and that his offensive versatility gave him an inside track to becoming one of the more important players on the roster. Three games in, Reaves has gone above and beyond what was expected of him, garnering hype that feels both overblown and well deserved. It’s abundantly clear that he’s the most popular player in the entire tournament. He’s also one of its most efficient, spearheading a Team USA reserve unit that is running opposing teams off the floor. His shooting (55.6 percent on three 3-point attempts per game) and playmaking (4.3 assists per game in the first round of group play) have translated, as has his preternatural ability to get to the free throw line. And then there are the little pops of stardom he hints at from time to time:
In most respects, Reaves is playing out a familiar role, filling the gaps behind more heralded players. Unlike teammates including Brandon Ingram and Paolo Banchero, Reaves hasn’t had to adjust his game much. For a young team still working out its on-court chemistry in real time, Reaves’s embodiment of internal consistency serves as a metronome of sorts.
