Team USA vs Team CSA?

I love historical counterfactuals – what if Europe had not appeased Hitler in 1938? (Or given Germany a less onerous treaty ending WW1?) Or what if Britain had won the American revolutionary war?

Or, what if the Confederacy had won the Civil War (or as some in my home state call it, the ‘War of Northern Agression’!) The usual counterfactual studied is something along the lines of – how long would it have been until the CSA abolished slavery (common guess – 1890s/ early 1900s). But in keeping with this blog, I have a very different counterfactual in mind – what would Team USA in hoops look like, if it didn’t have any players from the 11 states of the Confederacy?

That is, let’s compare a hypothetical Team CSA to a remnant Team USA. To qualify for Team CSA, I’ll say you had to be born or play high school ball in one of the 11 Confederate states – college doesn’t count. And we can start with the actual Team USA to begin – it turns out 12 members of the penultimate squad practicing in Vegas this summer don’t hail from the Confederacy, so we can make that our hypothetical Team USA:

Carmelo Anthony (Denver Nuggets); Shane Battier (Houston Rockets); Chauncey Billups (Detroit Pistons); Kobe Bryant (Los Angeles Lakers); Tyson Chandler (New Orleans Hornets); Kevin Durant (Seattle SuperSonics); Kirk Hinrich (Chicago Bulls); LeBron James (Cleveland Cavaliers); Jason Kidd (New Jersey Nets); Mike Miller (Memphis Grizzlies); Tayshaun Prince (Detroit Pistons); Michael Redd (Milwaukee Bucks);

Starters: Chandler, LeBron, Melo, Kobe, Kidd
Bench: Battier, Durant, Miller, Prince, Redd, Hinrich, Billups,

Not much size, so for the 2008 Olympics, they would no doubt sub Elton Brand (team member, but currently hurt) for Durant. Otherwise, this appears plausible.

For Team CSA, there are 4 current Team USA members that would thus be part of our hypothetical Team CSA:
Dwight Howard (Orlando Magic); Amaré Stoudemire (Phoenix Suns); Chris Bosh (Toronto Raptors); Deron Williams (Utah Jazz).

To fill out the roster, I add these players who hail from the Confederacy, and have been on Team USA in the past, or were invited to Team USA tryouts this year:
Joe Johnson, Chris Paul, Kevin Garnett, Tracy McGrady, Shaquille O’Neal, Vince Carter, Josh Howard, Shawn Marion

That gives us the following team:

Starters: Shaq, Amare, KG, TMac, Deron Williams
Bench: DHoward, Bosh, Marion, Joe Johnson, Josh Howard, Vince Carter, C. Paul

The take-home: I think the CSA team would crush the USA, particularly off the bench. If the old Shaq is around, the CSA would be unstoppable on offense, and even if he barely plays, the other bigs on the CSA easily trump the USA bigs (and that’s without guys like Jermaine O’Neal or Ben Wallace even making the squad!). Kidd is a great distributor, but no one else is for Team USA – and Chris Paul and Deron Williams give the CSA a great young 1-2 punch at PG. Kobe, Melo, and LeBron may be the three most overrated players in the league – I fear the real Team USA may lose this summer or next because of their inability to share well. TMac, Joe Johnson and Josh Howard have shown in their NBA careers that they can be ideal complimentary players, however. In short, team CSA looks like a better team.

So while in reality the South will not rise again, if they ever split for basketball purposes, the South would kick some ass, methinks.