USA Basketball is building something different this time around. The national team coaching staff just got three new faces, and none of them are the kind of retread names you’d expect from a program that tends to lean on veteran NBA lifers.
According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, Erik Spoelstra’s bench will include Oklahoma City Thunder coach Mark Daigneault, Detroit Pistons coach JB Bickerstaff, and Gonzaga’s Mark Few. That’s three head coaches, all of whom are either rising stars or have been grinding at a high level for years.
Why these three?
Daigneault just won a championship with the Thunder in 2024-25. That alone gets you a phone call. But his development work with young players — specifically Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Chet Holmgren — makes him a natural fit for USA’s program, where blending stars into a system is the whole game.
Bickerstaff’s resume is similar but different. He took the Pistons to the top seed in the East this season before losing to Cleveland in the second round. That’s not nothing. Detroit was a lottery team two years ago. Bickerstaff turned them into a real threat, and USA Basketball noticed.
Few? The guy has been at Gonzaga for 27 years and owns a 773-156 record. That’s an .832 winning percentage. He’s never won a national title, but he’s taken the Zags to two championship games and turned them into a national brand. His offensive system is built on movement and spacing — exactly what the international game demands.
What’s at stake
USA Basketball is coming off a gold medal in Paris in 2024, but it was anything but comfortable. The Americans trailed Serbia by 15 points entering the fourth quarter of the semifinals before storming back. Then they needed Steph Curry’s late-game heroics to hold off France in the gold medal game. That wasn’t dominance. That was survival.
The 2027 FIBA World Cup in Qatar is next. Then the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. That’s the real target. The 2024 team leaned on older stars like Curry, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis, and Joel Embiid. Nobody knows which of those guys will still be around in 2028. The program needs a new identity, and these three coaches are the beginning of that shift.
This isn’t just about filling chairs. Daigneault and Bickerstaff represent the next wave of NBA coaching. Few brings a college perspective that’s been undervalued by USA Basketball for too long. Combined with Spoelstra, who’s probably the best X’s and O’s coach in the league right now, this group has a different feel.
Not flashy. Not the biggest names out there. But competent. And after nearly losing to Serbia and France, competent is the floor.
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