Potential International lineup for Team USA vs World future All-Star Game format
By Ben Handler
Starting Center: Nikola Jokic, Serbia
Sorry to any Joel Embiid fans, but the best player alive is in the starting lineup for the international team. Jokic is running away with his third NBA MVP Award in four years, and the one year he didn’t win the award he took home Finals MVP.
The thought of Jokic out there running the offense and playing alongside the other stars on this roster is almost comical. There would be no way to send extra help without getting picked apart and leaving a more-than-capable scorer.
Jokic would bully defenders one-on-one, and if someone tried to cheat over to help just picture Giannis in the Aaron Gordon role, flying in for one alley-oop after another. Running pick-and-rolls and dribble hand-offs with SGA and Luka would be just as impossible for defenses to stop.
The “struggles” as always with Jokic can only be on defense, where we would undoubtedly face a tough cover. But he’s proven time and again that he’s more than capable when needed, and he’d have a world of capable helpers surrounding him. He can do more than enough to make it work with these guys around him.
It would be interesting to see which bench big men would be able to play together and how these rotations may work, but with Jokic’s ability to play out of the high post and run an offense, he’s adaptable enough to play and probably be successful alongside almost any combination of talented players.