Houston Rockets: James Harden to likely participate with USA basketball

The Houston Rockets will have an international superstar this summer as the Beard will help out USA basketball. Will he be able to dominate like he does in the NBA?

James Harden of the Houston Rockets has always been one to help out his country in both the Olympics and the FIBA World Cup, but hasn’t participated since 2014 when they won the gold in Spain.

Well now, it looks like the Beard will be on the roster for the USA team this offseason for the 2019 FIBA World Cup. He’ll be able to use his talents to help guide the squad to yet another gold medal at the event.

Harden will join fellow stars Kemba Walker and probably Anthony Davis on the team. That’s already a solid trio of stars that any singular team would be extremely excited to have. USA basketball is fantastic, though, and many more stars will continue to commit and join-up.

Houston's James Harden is expected to be on the Team USA roster at this stage, according to one source briefed on the situation. @usabasketball training camp starts in two months in Las Vegas

— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) June 2, 2019

The USA squad will be coached by Gregg Popovich this year. It will certainly be weird to see it not coached by Coach K, but having one of the best to ever do it replace him could definitely be worse.

Recruiting?

Even though the events don’t start until late in the summer, there will still be plenty of opportunity to recruit for the future. Obviously, the main goal is to win the gold for the country, first and foremost. But Harden will be using his talents to play with some of the best in the world, and that’s a solid recruiting pitch.

It probably won’t help the team for the coming offseason, but for future years, Harden continuing to build the relationships with other stars is extremely valuable to the Rockets. Let’s hope USA wins it all and everyone loves the Beard!