Saturday Slam: Should NBA players really be expected to play in international competition?

     Earlier this week, Utah Jazz rookie guard Dante Exum tore his ACL, which means he will miss the entire 2015-16 NBA season. The injury came about as Exum was playing with the Australian national team, which once again raises questions about whether or not NBA players should play for their countries in international events.

     While there is a lot of good that comes from representing your country, NBA players put millions of dollars and their own health at risk every time they compete for their respective countries in an international event that doesn't pay them a dime. Winning an Olympic gold medal or a FIBA World Cup championship is certainly a unique career achievement that many NBA players wish to achieve, but is it really worth the risk? Should we really criticize a player for skipping out on international events to let their body heal and get ready for the upcoming NBA season?

     In my opinion, when it comes to international competition, NBA players should feel comfortable doing whatever it is that they want to do. If an NBA player wants to compete for his country, that's great and he should be supported in doing so. But if an NBA player wants to avoid international competition so that he can be better healed and rested for the NBA season, he should be equally supported in doing so.

     If I can be honest, I don't think NBA teams should encourage players to participate in international events so long as the league remains structured the way that it is with an 82 game regular season schedule. NBA players play way more basketball than any other group of basketball players in the world. Even players who compete in the Euroleague don't come close to playing 82 games a year, which means that NBA players take way more of a pounding than anybody else.

     Given that the regular season is so long and that the playoffs make the season even longer, NBA players need their summers off to fully recover from the vicious pounding on the hardwood that they have experienced from the past NBA season. For any NBA player to go out and put even more stress on his body in an international event is very risky and potentially dangerous. While risk of injury seems only hypothetical, the injuries to Dante Exum this past week and Paul George last year show us that serious injuries do in fact happen in international competition.

     Now, given all of that, is there anything that the NBA can do to better protect its players from getting hurt in international competition? If a player wants to compete for his country and fully knows the risks, is there anything the NBA can do? In that case, the answer is no.

     But what the league can do is not make NBA players feel pressured to play in FIBA events. As a matter of fact, NBA teams would be smart to do all they can to keep players from doing so. The NBA needs to remind its players that the amount of pounding they take in an NBA season is borderline unhealthy as it is and that any more playing than the regular NBA grind is putting them at serious risk. While representing your country is a noble thing to do, it simply isn't realistic for NBA players to be expected to compete in international events after going through such a grueling NBA season.

     Competing for your country should still be viewed in a positive light, but what needs to go is any sort of stigma for choosing to avoid international competition. In light of what happened to Dante Exum and Paul George, I don't see any reason to expect NBA players to continue participating in FIBA events. The risks seem to outweigh the rewards by a considerable amount.

---Ben Parker: follow me on twitter @nba_lord for NBA news 

Saturday Slam: How will Paul George's injury affect USA Basketball going forward?

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The news of Paul George breaking his leg in a USA Basketball scrimmage in Las Vegas rocked the basketball world earlier this month. Whether you are a fan, a writer, a player, a coach, or somebody in management, this news was tough to stomach. Part of it has to do with the setting and part of it has to do with the sheer nauseating nature of the injury itself. You don't want to see any athlete break their leg, but when it happens in a setting in which the athlete is representing their country, the word "tragic" comes to mind as the best way to articulate and describe what has happened.

In a larger context, questions arise about what this kind of injury does to the future of USA Basketball when the participants are being paid millions of dollars by their respective NBA teams while not being paid even a fraction of that to play for Team USA. Will it make more superstars pull out like Kevin Durant did this week or will most players hold the position that what happened to Paul George was an unfortunate freak accident that could have happened in any NBA game? I will argue that while most players will hold the position that this was just a freak accident, this will also greatly affect USA Basketball when it comes to getting players for non-Olympic competitions.

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People are wondering about whether or not Kevin Durant's decision to pull out of USA Basketball for the upcoming FIBA World Cup has anything to do with Paul George's injury. The answer is yes it does and so does the fact that nobody cares about the FIBA World Cup outside of basketball junkies like me.

Had this injury happened right before the 2016 Olympics, I don't think Kevin Durant would be pulling out due to the fact that in basketball, the Olympics carries a lot more weight than does the FIBA World Cup or any other international competition. The success of the 1992 Dream Team in Barcelona, Spain has made a lasting imprint on the history of basketball to the point that I think every NBA player who is an American citizen wants to play on the USA Olympic basketball team at least once in his career.

 The United States has a rich tradition of dominating that event every four years and taking home the gold medal, making it one of the highest honors in all of basketball second only to winning an NBA championship. To many great players who failed to win an NBA championship like John Stockton, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, and Charles Barkley, winning an Olympic gold medal is the greatest achievement of their careers due to the sheer prestige of being able to play on Team USA.

However, that honor and distinction doesn't accompany the FIBA World Cup or any other international competition because the best players in the United States don't play. LeBron James, Chris Paul, and Carmelo Anthony are all sitting out of the FIBA World Cup, so should it really come as a surprise that Kevin Durant is doing the same thing especially after the Paul George injury?

The bottom line is that I don't think the Paul George injury will affect USA Basketball participation in the Olympics, but I do think it will affect USA Basketball participation in every other event including the FIBA World Cup. I think that the cream of the crop will only want to play for USA Basketball if there is an Olympic gold medal on the line. Otherwise, they'll let lesser known players get the chance to represent the United States in their place.

However, this doesn't mean that the United States won't be able to compete and win other international competitions outside of the Olympics. USA Basketball can go 25-35 guys deep and still have the best team on the floor. But USA Basketball isn't just about winning trophies. It's about featuring the very best players in the world and the opportunities for USA Basketball to do that are going to shrink to being once every four years at the Olympics.

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In terms of its impact on world-wide basketball events, this is obviously huge since USA Basketball is always the biggest draw and the team that everybody wants to see. FIBA wants to eventually rival FIFA in popularity, but it's always going to seem like a little brother standing next to FIFA so long as USA Basketball is only able to get its best players on the floor for the Olympics.

The Paul George injury has a larger impact on FIBA than on USA Basketball because USA Basketball is all about the Olympics and FIBA is all about the other events that go on besides the Olympics. If FIBA wants its World Cup to become a major event, it will have to find ways to get guys like LeBron James and Kevin Durant to participate which at this point seems like a tall order. USA Basketball will continue to march on as a gold medal winning machine at the Olympics with its brightest stars showing up, but as for FIBA and its efforts to build up events like the FIBA World Cup, this injury could be a devastating blow.

---Ben Parker: follow me on twitter @nba_lord