Team USA and Slovenia are playing live on the FIBA basketball schedule heading into the World Cup tournament and this matchup starts at 2 pm ET from Gran Canaria Arena in Spain and is the final warm up game for the team as they get ready to start the tournament and it comes after games against Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico for players like Kyrie Irving, Derrick Rose, James Harden, Anthony Davis and Andre Drummond.
The United States team is one of the favored nations in the tournament and they have the chance to make a deep run. The team lost Paul George to that devastating injury as they were preparing in Las Vegas, but the team did not waver and now they are looking very string heading into things. The team won all its exhibition games leading into the World Cup and despite having Kevin Durant drop out, the roster is still very strong and is also much deeper than people expected it to be.
Kyrie Irving will be the starting point guard for the team and this comes just under a week before the FIBA tournament opens for the United States. Irving and Derrick Rose likely will alternate playing at point guard for Team USA and that gives the United States a huge advantage, as they are both All Star level players at the point. Rose is coming back from another serious injury, so there is a chance that coach Mike Krzyzewski will go easy with him and that is one reason the team is likely using Irving for this game.
Irving will matchup with Goran Dragic on Tuesday in the game against Slovenia and it comes as Rose will get some rest after playing in the last game. The team opted to keep Mason Plumlee and Andre Drummond on the roster and the team also has Anthony Davis as their star right now and he has been playing great. Rose has played in just 10 games in the NBA the past two seasons and he could be a wild card for the team.
The USA team has had to build their roster without elite players like Kevin Love, LaMarcus Aldridge and Russell Westbrook on the team and they also lost George to that crazy injury. The team is in Group C in the tournament and they are considered the favorites, as they have a fairly easy schedule to start things off. The team plays against Finland, Turkey, New Zealand as well as the Dominican Republic and they have already won over the DR.
The team opens the schedule on August 30 against Finland at Bizkaia Arena in Bilbao and that comes ahead of the Turkey game the next day. Those games are on ESPN and the September 2 matchup has NZ and that will be in the same location, while the DR is after that and then that is followed by Ukraine and the team has all of those games stretched across a quick week on the schedule leading into the back end of the tournament. The semis are on Sept. 11-12 and then the gold medal game will be on September 14.
Check here for the Team USA and Slovenia FIBA live coverage.
