Greatest Player in USA International Basketball

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Soccer has a term "cap" describing a player's appearance for his national team. I thought we could start by asking: who has the most caps for USA basketball? It turns out there are 8 players with 20 or more:

Olym FIBA Total Name
24 10 34 David Robinson
24 9 33 LeBron James
23 9 32 Carmelo Anthony
9 18 27 Mike Silliman
16 9 25 Chris Paul
16 8 24 Dwyane Wade, Jr.
8 14 22 Reggie Miller
6 16 22 Alonzo MourningObviously the professional rule changes make it easier for more recent players to accumulate caps, but I still thought the names were interesting. Olympic data from here (http://www.basketball-reference.com/awards/uso.html), FIBA World Championship data from here (http://www.fiba.com/pages/eng/fa/p/cid/WMM/fromseason//lid_38132_cp/1/q/FIBA%20Basketball%20World%20Cup/rpp//toseason//_//events.html
). Medal-wise obviously Robinson is ahead of everyone with 3 golds 1 bronze, LeBron and Carmelo each have 2 golds 2 bronze, and no one else has 4 medals.

We have full stats from 94-10 for World Championships (5 competitions) and if we poke around long enough here (http://archive.usab.com/) we can get full enough Olympic stats from 84-12 (8 competitions). Unfortunately their formatting is terrible so I need time to try and establish an MVP for each competition, but I thought the preliminary results were interesting already. None of the players listed are in the 2014 MNT pool.

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I've compiled all the Win Shares for the stated tournaments. This went mostly without issue except for three little things:

1. For 1994 and 1996 FIBA apparently decided that blocks were for losers and didn't record them. basketball-reference lists blocks for all Olympics (so 1996 is fully complete) but their record routinely disagrees with FIBA's.

2. In 1988 we had two players named Charles Smith, and FIBA only kept stats for one of them. (They were both rotation players on that team, but ironically FIBA kept stats for Charles E. Smith IV, whose NBA career was far less distinguished than Charles D. Smith's, who is the Charles Smith every Knicks and Bulls fan remembers.)

3. In 1984 we played a group stage game against Spain that was apparently pretty boring, because no records for Spain and 4 USA scrubs were kept. I assigned Spain the average value for our opponents.

A bigger potential problem was that international competition is famously lopsided in most games, especially Team USA games. Win Shares use three league-wide stats so such a disparate league ended up inflating Team USA Win Shares beyond their number of actual wins. I say potential because when I forced WS to equal Wins and summed them for all players, I got the same #1 as when I didn't force that scaling. Here are the top 10 for each method, where "sWS" refers to scaled Win Shares:



sWS Name
4.70 L. James
3.55 R. Miller
3.54 C. Paul
3.33 C. Anthony
3.22 K. Durant
2.75 D. Wade
2.58 D. Robinson
2.05 C. Barkley
1.99 C. Bosh
1.89 L. Odom

WS Name
4.84 L. James
4.59 D. Robinson
4.25 K. Durant
3.65 C. Paul
3.65 C. Barkley
3.63 R. Miller
3.46 C. Anthony
3.14 C. Mullin
3.06 S. Pippen
3.03 M. Jordan


Whichever method you think is more appropriate, LeBron is the most productive player in Team USA history (84-present Olympics and 94-present World Championship). As of a week ago Durant has committed to the 2014 World Championships, and if he competes will almost certainly pass LeBron in the unscaled and possibly even the scaled. Another possibly interesting way to look at it is the best 5 players on any given squad:



Year 1 2 3 4 5
1984 Alford Wood Ewing Jordan Mullin
1988 Robins. Majerle Manning Richm. Coles
1992 Barkley Mullin Pippen Malone Jordan
1994 Miller O'Neal Dumars Wilkins Kemp
1996 Barkley Pippen Miller Harda. Hill
1998 Oliver Alexis King King Hawkins
2000 Carter Garnett Allen Mourn. Kidd
2002 Pierce Miller Finley Wallace Brand
2004 Duncan Marion Odom Iverson Boozer
2006 Anthony Wade Paul James Howard
2008 Wade James Paul Bosh Anthony
2010 Durant Billups Odom W'brook Gay
2012 Durant James Love Anthony Paul
(Note that 2002 is Andre Miller, not Reggie.)

It's fascinating how neither James nor Jordan were ever the best player on a given Team USA, and how Jordan was never even close. The only players to manage two top finishes were Barkley and Durant, which is a little ominous for the Thunder. Some might scoff at Barkley, but here are a few statistical tidbits:
-Everyone knows he led the Dream Team in scoring at 18 a game, but he did so shooting 71% from the field.
-He had as many offensive rebounds as Michael Jordan had total (19), also more than Pippen's 17 total.
-Apparently not satisfied with that, in 1996 he shot 82% from the field(!!!!!) while still leading the team in points per game.
-At the age of 32, he led the team in rebounds. Also on that team: 23 year old Shaq, David Robinson, Karl Malone, Hakeem. Also he only played in 7 games. NBD.

Charles Barkley is underrated as an NBA player, but he's criminally underrated as an international player.

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The last thing we can do is take our 20+ caps squad (less Silliman) and divide their sWS by caps and see who gets the best ratio; that is, who was the most productive Team USA player per game played:


0.161 R. Miller
0.142 L. James
0.142 C. Paul
0.115 D. Wade
0.104 C. Anthony
0.076 D. Robinson
0.060 A. Mourning

Reggie Miller! Didn't see that one coming. There's a small asterisk because his best performance by far came in 1994, and it's plausible that his place on the team in blocks was very low given that he never cracked 30 in an NBA season, which would bring his numbers down. Still, well done Reggie! LeBron is ahead of Paul mathematically by .0007, the order is not arbitrary.

Bottom line, taking efficiency and presence into account I think you have to go with LBJ #1 USA.

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Here are the full Win Shares:


Year Name WS sWS
2012 A. Davis 0.348624733 0.238809619
2012 A. Iguodala 0.671752753 0.460153866
2012 C. Anthony 1.251996005 0.857623284
2012 C. Paul 1.213638726 0.831348364
2012 D. Williams 0.860533752 0.589469759
2012 J. Harden 0.328445968 0.224987068
2012 K. Bryant 0.7845674 0.537432442
2012 K. Durant 1.884710236 1.291035575
2012 K. Love 1.313289662 0.899609734
2012 L. James 1.814910691 1.243222551
2012 R. Westbrook 0.616001851 0.421964231
2012 T. Chandler 0.59027835 0.404343509
2010 A. Igoudala 0.92886099 0.758501693
2010 C. Billups 1.232043656 1.006078638
2010 D. Granger 0.251734624 0.205564816
2010 D. Rose 0.696576758 0.568819938
2010 E. Gordon 0.832900746 0.680141198
2010 K. Durant 2.362284225 1.929025553
2010 K. Love 0.800481717 0.653668035
2010 L. Odom 1.026705152 0.838400584
2010 R. Gay 0.948483576 0.774525366
2010 R. Westbrook 0.960242267 0.784127435
2010 S. Curry 0.45398565 0.370721655
2010 T. Chandler 0.527098461 0.43042509
2008 C. Anthony 1.079178134 0.782874843
2008 C. Boozer 0.154478659 0.112064406
2008 C. Bosh 1.372067378 0.995347292
2008 C. Paul 1.414417759 1.02606979
2008 D. Howard 1.072019755 0.777681896
2008 D. Wade 1.696950689 1.231029394
2008 D. Williams 0.686679421 0.498142083
2008 J. Kidd 0.326250954 0.23667424
2008 K. Bryant 0.918753189 0.666496787
2008 L. James 1.684401625 1.221925849
2008 M. Redd 0.097282766 0.070572436
2008 T. Prince 0.525368051 0.381120983
2006 A. Jamison 0.122330153 0.109199508
2006 B. Miller 0.21825767 0.19483038
2006 C. Anthony 1.381768033 1.233452145
2006 C. Bosh 0.693555698 0.619110982
2006 C. Paul 1.026857401 0.916636826
2006 D. Howard 0.828806448 0.739844219
2006 D. Wade 1.139956359 1.017595995
2006 E. Brand 0.600426859 0.535978384
2006 J. Johnson 0.5105902 0.455784591
2006 K. Hinrich 0.778591199 0.695018962
2006 L. James 0.986343047 0.880471192
2006 S. Battier 0.674473266 0.602076816
2004 A. Iverson 0.767805125 0.70295036
2004 A. Stoudemire 0.178576289 0.163492353
2004 C. Anthony -0.255157835 -0.233605229
2004 C. Boozer 0.734038309 0.672035751
2004 C. Okafor -0.061549276 -0.056350348
2004 D. Wade 0.042905044 0.039280952
2004 L. James 0.352190576 0.322441833
2004 L. Odom 0.945689186 0.865808956
2004 R. Jefferson -0.026427521 -0.024195248
2004 S. Marbury 0.680034489 0.622593512
2004 S. Marion 0.973737858 0.891488421
2004 T. Duncan 1.129461772 1.034058687
2002 A. Davis 0.639069439 0.449111438
2002 A. Miller 1.038683046 0.729943272
2002 B. Davis 0.511504471 0.359464081
2002 B. Wallace 0.867878024 0.609908602
2002 E. Brand 0.735992921 0.517225233
2002 J. O'Neal 0.565218563 0.397212112
2002 J. Williams 0.232105459 0.163114069
2002 M. Finley 1.022878431 0.718836445
2002 P. Pierce 1.852955528 1.302180126
2002 R. LaFrentz 0.155652766 0.109386294
2002 R. Miller 0.267534845 0.188012369
2002 S. Marion 0.648310909 0.455605959
2000 A. Houston 0.739418711 0.56942921
2000 A. McDyess 0.745182119 0.573867632
2000 A. Mourning 0.889316188 0.684865837
2000 G. Payton 0.445322383 0.34294449
2000 J. Kidd 0.837992572 0.645341322
2000 K. Garnett 1.320112774 1.016623954
2000 R. Allen 1.115131341 0.85876696
2000 S. Abdur-Rahim 0.802627011 0.618106166
2000 S. Smith 0.558778369 0.430317384
2000 T. Hardaway 0.468855696 0.361067586
2000 V. Baker 0.715971688 0.551372567
2000 V. Carter 1.749500228 1.347296894
1998 A. Amaya 0.590084651 0.539981043
1998 B. Miller 0.474344446 0.434068245
1998 D. Wood 0.616841541 0.564466027
1998 G. King 0.848393481 0.77635708
1998 J. King 0.789747656 0.722690824
1998 J. Oliver 1.268611739 1.160894948
1998 J. Sasser 0.710210487 0.649907092
1998 K. Garris 0.335088711 0.306636601
1998 S. Hawkins 0.743380082 0.680260283
1998 T. Langdon 0.234224593 0.214336774
1998 W. Alexis 0.869976913 0.79610788
1998 W. Edwards 0.168609717 0.154293203
1996 A. Hardaway 1.277407886 0.780140086
1996 C. Barkley 1.53843745 0.939556377
1996 D. Robinson 1.253378655 0.765464925
1996 G. Hill 1.269927212 0.77557148
1996 G. Payton 0.72850023 0.44491054
1996 H. Olajuwon 0.504041873 0.307829061
1996 J. Stockton 0.59364363 0.362550754
1996 K. Malone 0.913895056 0.558135092
1996 M. Richmond 1.117757607 0.682638275
1996 R. Miller 1.383923299 0.845191308
1996 S. O'Neal 1.081950796 0.660770296
1996 S. Pippen 1.436403053 0.877241806
1994 A. Mourning 1.004910742 0.641848063
1994 D. Coleman 0.827316181 0.528416372
1994 D. Majerle 0.98029855 0.626127973
1994 J. Dumars 1.33607946 0.853369337
1994 J. Wilkins 1.185257403 0.757037553
1994 K. Johnson 0.657341399 0.419851522
1994 L. Johnson 0.717361436 0.45818701
1994 M. Price 0.818468014 0.522764946
1994 R. Miller 1.977696574 1.263177577
1994 S. Kemp 1.015216663 0.648430574
1994 S. O'Neal 1.420874641 0.907528996
1994 S. Smith 0.584395409 0.373260078
1992 C. Barkley 2.114222289 1.110814842
1992 C. Drexler 1.435220786 0.754066665
1992 C. Laettner 0.758196264 0.398357196
1992 C. Mullin 1.698569791 0.892430537
1992 D. Robinson 1.085395452 0.570268029
1992 E. Johnson 0.995357345 0.522961903
1992 J. Stockton 0.189567859 0.099599173
1992 K. Malone 1.553713546 0.816322898
1992 L. Bird 1.117053974 0.586901453
1992 M. Jordan 1.520916921 0.799091513
1992 P. Ewing 1.135053566 0.596358459
1992 S. Pippen 1.623192711 0.852827332
1988 C. Smith 1.064049776 0.585876932
1988 D. Majerle 2.00559542 1.104301809
1988 D. Manning 1.61387312 0.888615414
1988 D. Robinson 2.251346649 1.239615005
1988 H. Hawkins 0.637141017 0.350816506
1988 H. Reid 0.595512634 0.327895483
1988 J. Grayer 1.019524344 0.561360764
1988 M. Richmond 1.373618187 0.756328536
1988 S. Augmon 0.310518783 0.170974889
1988 V. Coles 1.166803994 0.642454479
1988 W. Anderson 0.675178213 0.371760184
1984 A. Robertson 1.319854754 0.763421299
1984 C. Mullin 1.4433045 0.834826251
1984 J. Kleine 0.476879478 0.275833344
1984 J. Koncak 0.331823415 0.191931015
1984 J. Turner 0.305228123 0.176547949
1984 L. Wood 1.905623778 1.102237785
1984 M. Jordan 1.513238453 0.875276967
1984 P. Ewing 1.661338532 0.960939995
1984 S. Alford 1.926713451 1.114436328
1984 S. Perkins 0.854620421 0.494323659
1984 V. Fleming 0.994593801 0.575286098
1984 W. Tisdale 1.097726334 0.634939308

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As of a week ago Durant has committed to the 2014 World Championships, and if he competes will almost certainly pass LeBron in the unscaled and possibly even the scaled.Well, so much for that! (http://espn.go.com/olympics/basketball/story/_/id/11323854/kevin-durant-oklahoma-city-thunder-withdraws-team-usa)