The team: Cameron Boozer, Cayden Boozer, Chris Cenac, AJ Dybantsa, Jalen Haralson, Caleb Holt, JJ Mandaquit, Brandon McCoy, Koa Peat, Jordan Smith, Tyran Stokes and Jaden Toombs.
Bossi’s breakdown: When putting this list together a few things were top of mind. Most notable was wanting to avoid being prisoners of the moment or basing the ranking of the best gold medal teams on stats alone. That being said, it’s nearly impossible to deny what the 2024 team just finished doing. When we left the team trials in Colorado Springs a few weeks ago our general thought was something along the lines of “good luck world” but what the most recent gold medalists did, exceeded even the most ambitious of expectations.
Prior to this year, the most points any USA team had averaged was 107.5 points per game. This year’s team scored 128.6 points per game. While they did allow 64.3 point per game, the second most ever by the USA, they still managed to double up their opponents.
It doesn’t stop with scoring. Prior to this year, the most assists the USA had ever had in a single game was 36. The 2024 team averaged 40.3 per game. Their 163 steals were 29 more than any other year and the list goes on and on.
Featuring the No. 1 and No. 2 players in 2025 in Dybantsa and Cameron Boozer along with 2026’s No. 1 and No. 2 players in Stokes and McCoy among their 10 five-star prospects, this team was simply stacked. While earning MVP honors and leading seven players who averaged double digits for Team USA, Cameron Boozer’s 20.1 points per game matched his minutes per game. Boozer eclipsed longtime NBA star Bradley Beal’s previous USA Basketball U17 team-high scoring average of 18.3 points per outing.
Only time will tell how good this group is at the next level and beyond, but what they just got done says that they are the best youth team that USA Basketball has ever produced.
The team: Scottie Barnes, Vernon Carey, Jalen Green, RJ Hampton, De’Vion Harmon, Evan Mobley, Wendell Moore, Isaac Okoro, Jeremy Roach, Isaiah Stewart, Jalen Suggs and Romeo Weems.
Bossi’s breakdown: Prior to the 2024 team, the 2018 team won its gold medal in the most dominant fashion. Green earned MVP honors in Argentina while leading a very strong group. At least statistically, they were as good as any winning USA team. They won by an average of 53.7 points per game and won by less than 40 points only one time. They out-rebounded their opponents by nearly 20 boards per game and set the standard for steals (19.1 per game) that the 2024 team beat.
The 2018 roster has had plenty of success since their FIBA dominance as well. This group went on to produce eight first-round NBA Draft picks with five of them – Okoro in 2020 along with Barnes, Green, Mobley and Suggs in 2021 – being selected in the top five. Barnes has already been an All-Star while Green and Mobley are putting together the types of early careers that suggest they could eventually reach that level as well.
The team: Tyus Battle, Henry Ellenson, Terrance Ferguson, Harry Giles, Josh Jackson, VJ King, Malik Newman, Ivan Rabb, Devearl Ramsey, Diamond Stone, Caleb Swanigan and Jayson Tatum.
Bossi’s breakdown: This is where it is important to not base things solely off of stats. The 2014 team was the only team to ever allow a team to keep the score within single digits when Australia pushed them in the gold medal game. They also had the second-closest game in team history when they only beat Greece by 10. But it can be argued that the 2014 team faced the best competition of any Team USA squad. Even with those two close games they won games in the tournament by an average of 38.1 points while shooting a USA-best-ever 51.5% from the field as a team.
The 2014 Team USA also out rebounded its opponents by a second-best 22.6 per game (56.9 to 34.3) and held them to an all-time lowest 32.4% shooting from the field.
Despite the fact that NBA career of Josh Jackson, the consensus No.1 player in the class, has been derailed by off-the-floor issues, and only Tatum remains as an NBA regular, this team was as feared as any the USA has ever rolled out.
Tatum is fresh off an NBA Championship with the Boston Celtics and is probably the most successful professional produced from any of the USA’s gold medal-winning teams. Even if the 2014 Team USA didn’t produce the most successful pros, this team was elite during their high school days. You just had to see them in their prime to truly understand how good they were.
The team: Justin Anderson, Bradley Beal, Quinn Cook, Andre Drummond, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, James Michael McAdoo, Johnny O’Bryant, Tony Parker, Chasson Randle, Marquis Teague, Adonis Thomas and Tony Wroten.
Bossi’s breakdown: The original gold medalists at the FIBA U17 World Cup, this is the group that started it all. Call it nostalgia if you want, but if you ask around the USA Basketball offices there are still more than a few who would argue this group was the best ever. While Beal held the USA record for most points per game until Cameron Boozer broke it this year, he’s still the best three-point shooter the U17 team has ever seen. He made 31 threes during the tournament and hit at nearly 48% clip.
While they had the “smallest” margin of victory of any gold medal team at 34.9 points per game, the 2010 team were also the highest scoring at 107.5 points — until the 2024 team hit the floor. When healthy, Beal is still a formidable scorer in the NBA and Drummond (who was just 15 when he suited up in 2010) is still active.
In total, no U17 USA Team has had more of its members play in the NBA. All but one member of the 2010 team has touched the floor in an NBA regular season game.
The team: Jordan Brown, Troy Brown, Wendell Carter, Carte’Are Gordon, Markus Howard, Jaren Jackson, Kevin Knox, Immanuel Quickley, Collin Sexton, Javonte Smart, Gary Trent Jr. and Austin Wiley.
Bossi’s breakdown: Based on the numbers alone, this is the best rebounding team that the USA has ever sent to the U17 World Cup. This group not only averaged the most rebounds of any USA team at 57.6 per game, they surrendered the least at just 33.0 per game. That’s some serious work on the glass.
Less than a week ago, Quickley signed a deal with the Toronto Raptors that will pay him $175 million over the next five years and he was dead last in scoring on the 2016 team. Jackson is one of the best interior defenders in the NBA and is set to sign another huge contract at the age of 26 next summer.
NBA dollars made after playing in the World Cup isn’t the most important thing when looking back at which team was best, but when you add in what Brown, Carter, Knox, Sexton and Trent have already made its around 300 million dollars. All of that cash before any of them are older than 25-years-old is nothing to sneeze at.
The team: Beejay Anya, Joel Berry, Stephen Domingo, Conner Frankamp, Dakari Johnson, Stanley Johnson, Tyus Jones, Kendrick Nunn, Jahlil Okafor, Jabari Parker, Johnathan Williams and Justise Winslow.
Bossi’s breakdown: If there has been a weakness for Team USA over the years, it has been three-point shooting. At 35.7% from deep, the 2012 team is the best ever when it comes to shooting from beyond the arc. Even after winning games by an average of 100-60.1, the 2021 USA Team settles in at next to last on this list in terms of overall dominance during their gold medal run at the World Cup.
Injuries (Jabari Parker) and the evolution of the game away from back to the basket posts (Jahlil Okafor) have led to lesser than expected careers for two of this group’s star players. Okafor and Tyus Jones – who is still a productive NBA player – also helped to form the core of Duke’s 2015 NCAA Championship squad. Only the most degenerate, we really mean avid, hoops fans would have known or guessed prior to reading this article that Frankamp led this bunch in scoring at 14.1 points per game.
The team: David Castillo, Dennis Evans, Jeremy Fears, Cooper Flagg, Boogie Fland, Ron Holland, Ian Jackson, Karter Knox, Asa Newell, Koa Peat, Sean Stewart and DJ Wagner.
Bossi’s breakdown: The 2022 team is the only team that the USA has sent to the FIBA U17 World Cup that averaged less than 100 points per game. They averaged 99.6. They also happened to be the second-best shooting team the USA has ever had from three-point range, making 34.4% of their shots from deep. Defensively they also held opponents to the second lowest shooting percentage of any USA World Cup team at just 32.5%.
When it comes to teams whose ranking among the best could change quickly, this is the group. Holland was taken No. 5 overall in the 2024 NBA Draft and Flagg is currently expected to go No. 1 overall in 2025. After playing a role off the bench for this team in 2022, Peat became the USA’s only two-time gold medal winner in the U17 World Cup. He was Team USA’s second-leading scorer in 2024.
Right now, the 2022 team was not dominant enough and hasn’t had enough time to produce difference-makers at the next level to rank them above any other team. But remember, this is also a situation where the ranking of these teams is more like 1A through 1G than it is one through seven. Team USA has been consistently dominant.
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