USA has won 7 straight U17 golds by an average of 30+. The youth gap is nothing new. The real question is why that dominance doesn’t carry over to the senior level the way people expect — says more about development systems than raw talent pools.

Damn how many world cups are going on lol

On another note the Serbian kid Nikola Kusturica is probably going to be a top 5 pick in 2028, same with Joaquim Boumtje Boumtje for Team USA, he’ll be playing at Duke for 2 years before he’s draft eligible.

Rest of the world has 14 year olds trying to find empty courts in their neighborhood and making time to play between classes and homework while we broadcast high school and AAU games on national TV. The gap is never going to close at the amateur level.

I just don’t understand what you’re so defensive over 😭

For serbia and most other european countrys its a sucsess when we get 1 nba level player out of every generation, this squad could have 2-3.

Serbia has a population of 6.5M people. The US has about 342M.

Americans are so insecure. The rest of the world starts to embrace the sport you love and instead of just being happy to see it grow it needs to be a dick measuring contest. Exhausting.

They are too small of a country to compete, bro. And Kusturica from Serbia is projected to be a top 3 pick in the 2028 draft.

imagine being a sore winner after the U17 World Cup 

Didn’t the US lose the U18 a couple months ago?

This is not impressive. We have 330 million people. Serbia does not. What if we took the best players from a single state that has the population of Serbia (or fewer)? Would we still do well?

God damn you are stupid

It’s simple maths. If you did a World Cup each year with an age limit on each bracket, the US would win each one. However, at the senior level you only need 10 elite players in the country at any age to keep up. Don’t know why that’s so hard a concept for you to grasp OP

the way people frame “rest of the world catching up” always overlooks how the u17 team is basically nba-level talent playing against high schoolers. the real gap has always been at the senior level where experience and team systems matter more. until other countries can match the depth of nba-caliber players usa puts out every year, the youth tournaments arent really measuring what people think they are

the ‘rest catching up’ talk comes around every cycle without fail. reality is the us youth pipeline is deeper than ever — look at how many high school kids are going straight to the g league or overseas now. the senior level is a different story because our best guys pick and choose when they wanna play for team usa. put the olympic roster against anyone and it’s still a mismatch.

This was a topic in Turkiye for 2 reasons - being the host and one of the players on team, Kutluay being son of one of the legendary and popular basketball players. His dad was successful in Europe. My country is finally raising a proper nepo star.

Also you see a name Joaquim Boumtje-Boumtje. Yes, he’s his son.

You can argue that the best 5 players currently in the NBA are foreign. But they are all from various countries.

US will always hold the wealth of collective talent though

“The rest of the world” IS catching up though. Just no individual country is doing so. America has 350 million people to draw from, about 10-20 million of which play youth basketball. Serbia has 7 million people total lmao. Not to mention basketball is very much an afterthought in nearly every European country after Soccer and their budgets are comparatively tiny compared to the US.

When people talk about international dominance in basketball they mean that the 5 best players in the NBA are not-American, obviously they’re from 5 DIFFERENT countries. Used to be that America was pretty much the only place with serious basketball, but the international talent pool as a whole has grown considerably and the NBA is becoming increasingly international. Nobody is saying that Serbia, or France, or whoever is individually catching America, but America’s dominance in the sport is starting to wane generally.

America literally has to send their best to win now, and even at the last Olympics required Herculean efforts from all-time greats to pull it off. Steph/Lebron/KD won’t be there in 2028 to bail Ant/Tatum/Hali/Booker out. Pretending like the results of the U17 World Cup is indicative of something wild is moronic. It’s an established pattern for years now that America dominates the U17 world Cup and then can’t dominate the U19 cup two years later - because the talent development, program coordination, and AAU systems are broken!

Well Serbia has a population roughly equal to Maryland and their most popular sport isn’t basketball

Acting like it’s not great for the whole sport that other countries get better and become more competitive

Name the top NBA players and where they were born. Check the box scores of team USA in the medal rounds at the Olympics. It’s different than it used to be and that’s ok. That’s ok OP!

Americas moto is were the best so the world likes pointing out when we aren’t lol. And I’m not shitting on the worlds talents, they’ve more than caught up in basketball

France’s soccer and basketball team about to waltz into our country and take gold

https://www.fiba.basketball/en/history/276-fiba-u19-basketball-world-cup/3299/games/40901-USA-SRB

Rest of the world caught up long ago.

While NBA viewership will probably never match the NFL, basketball is the most accessible of the 4 major American sports. As it stays that way I can’t imagine the USA falling behind any other country in basketball talent, considering the the US’ high population and powerful economy.

OP is really using kids as development….

the depth is crazy too, even after 60 draft picks you’ve got undrafted guys making rosters and contributing. the US system just produces so many nba-caliber players that the rest of the world has to work twice as hard to match

US always does well in U17 and U16, because they’re just using their raw athleticism to beat everybody else into submission. High school kids don’t actually know how to play basketball

Vitamin S

Man Serbia has 6M people, you really think they should be able to defeat 360M America in such a narrow ageframe of U17? 

We’re comparing two different things. USA vs individual countries is not the same as USA vs the rest of the world combined 

I mean US has 344 million people vs 6.5 from Serbia, is home to the strongest league, has invented basketball and also sometimes takes foreign players (notably Embiid in the last Olympics). I would argue that recent US results show that some of the other countries have higher quality per capita, but I don’t think US will be cooked due to the pool of the players they have access to. What kind of nightmare scenario would need to happen for US to consistently get beaten?

Boumtje boumtje Most American Player

And there probably wont be single american mvp in the 2020s

Jokic, SGA, Giannis, Luka, Wemby, Embiid, etc. exist now. More than 25% of the opening night rosters last season was non-American. 2025 draft had 23 international players. 2026 draft had 14.

The United States has the biggest talent pool in the world for basketball, so of course the national team is able to win. But that doesn’t change the fact that international basketball has improved greatly, their young players are being drafted, and are becoming prominent players in the league

My head was in World Cup mode and I was like what the fuck!

Got really confused for a sec and thought this was soccer lmao

This topic definitely triggered the anti-american basketball fans. Just admit a lot of the narratives about USA basketball are false.

This happens every youth WC. The US is like France soccer on steroids- depth is insane relative to the pool. The US G team is better than most country’s A team at the youth ranks.

Get with the program OP - The US is garbage doodoo at everything and also big meanies.

The u17/u19 are always going to skew in favour of the US thanks to population density alone. 

But when you can select a 12person squad from 18+ that’s when the gap has narrowed considerably.

I would love a game between Serbia and Australia to determine the real second placed team.

chet apparently style icon in Serbia

344 mill vs 6.5 mill pop

58-0 all-time at this event is absurd, the youth pipeline is obviously fine. But the ‘world is catching up’ talk was never really about U17 results, it’s about the top-end individual stars, Jokic, Luka, Wemby, SGA, Giannis winning every MVP. Those are two different conversations that keep getting mashed together.

As someone who grew up going to free warrior games, seeing Erick Dampier Jr in the box score made me do the Leo pointing meme

If US development is just fine, then why the US has failed in multiple occation to win the U19 World Cup when it has won all the U17?

I mean most recently in 2023 the US got 4th, in 2017 it got 3rd…

And it is not like in u19 the best players already playing in the NBA or something (we still saw a fare share of future stars playing in u19).

I think talking about youth basketball without understanding how it works (which is greatly different from NBA or senior basketball in general) can lead to some delusional consideration as many comments in this section or some consideration pointed out by OP. I know what I say is not liked much by average Reddit user (from the US), but the reality is indeed that the World is catching up and the catching is already happening.

The U17 success is solely due to the importance of physical dominance and individual skills/talent at the young age vs a more organised way of basketball. To win in U17 you just need to be bigger and stronger, then if you add couple of skilled guys you nail it. Also the points differential is usually due to many nations being in from developing countries, with limited spots for othe European countries.