James Harden and defense still aren't so hot on each other. In today's FIBA final against Serbia, Harden just drifted away from Nikola Kalinic, the player he was supposed to defend. Or maybe Harden was covering an invisible sixth player! Yeah, maybe.

Paul George's catastrophic leg injury was horrible for him, of course, but rough too for the Pacers and for the NBA, which will be without him for a year. So it's not a surprise that everyone's reconsidering the calculus of international basketball, in which a whole bunch is risked for very little reward.

Dallas Mavericks owner and naked billionaire Mark Cuban has long been against the NBA's partnership with FIBA and the International Olympic committee, and Paul George's injury in Friday night's Team USA scrimmage gave him another opportunity to rip the current system of international play.

Long after the credits should have rolled in the soap opera that was Junior Etou's high school basketball career, we have a plot twist.

Looks like an already-messy situation on the D.C. hoops scene is about to get messier. Junior Etou, a breakout star at Bishop O'Connell High School in Arlington, Va., is about to turn 18 all over again.

Last week, FIBA Asia held its annual referee clinic in Singapore. Along with boring clerical matters like getting licensed, attendees also received a pen! With a roll-out scroll featuring FIBA's 10 Referee Commandments. Like Moses down from the mountain, a Reddit user has passed along the wisdom contained within.

In response to our report that its newest basketball star will turn 21 years old this year, Bishop O'Connell High School is standing by its, um, man. But that support's not making Junior Etou any younger in the eyes of global basketball authorities, who now say they have an "official" copy of the player's birth…

Another birther movement burgeons on the shores of the Potomac. It kicked up last week, in the wake of Bishop O'Connell's 68-48 rout of DeMatha, for decades the touchstone hoops program in the nation's capital.

Olympic basketball is fun. But doesn't it look a little too much like NBA basketball? Sure, the lanes are were trapezoidal, and the three-point line's a little bit closer, but those tweaks are minor when compared to the upheaval that FIBA's proposed three-on-three basketball brings. Watch the clip above to get a…

John Calipari is once again coaching the Dominican national team, because he's John Calipari and fuck you. (Also: recruiting.) Olympic qualifying begins in a few weeks, so it's time to make some cuts. First up: one of only three NBA players on the preliminary roster.

Mohammad El Akkari is a guard for Moutahed, Tripoli, in Lebanon's Division A League Final 8. He scored 113 points in Tuesday's 173-141 victory against Bejjeh, Jbeil—a slight improvement over his season average of 7.6 points per game. Akkari was 40 of 69 from the field, including 32 of 59 from 3-point range, though…

Three of the country's best high school players traveled to Italy for the FIBA 3x3 Youth World Championships. Just 90 seconds in their semifinal game, Rebecca Greenwell went down with a knee injury. It fell to Linnae Harper and Kaela Davis to play 2-on-3, and the pair did their best, going all the way to overtime…

Edgar Sosa, a former Louisville guard who's now playing for John Calipari's Dominican Republic team in the FIBA Americas Championship, broke his leg after going up for a shot in a game against Panama today. There's video here of the break itself and a look at the totally unnatural state of Sosa's shin, but be…

When the currently out-of-work Williams announced his deal with Istanbul club Beskitas, the instinctual reaction was to chalk it up as a labor victory for the players. I don't need you to get paid, he seemed to be saying to the owners. But as FIBA and the Nets and all of us had time to think about it, the narrative…

The Chinese men's national basketball team apologized today for its most recent on-court brawl, in a designated "friendly" match against Brazil on Tuesday. Players and coaches blame it on bad calls — all within the first sixty-six seconds of play.

FIBA is considering some changes to international women's basketball, including lowering the rim to bring dunking to the game—finally—as well as new, monocle-fogging uniforms that'll make the sport "more attractive for spectators and media." We've come a long way, baby.

Following yesterday's basketbrawl at the Acropolis Tournament, Athens police arrested Nenad Krstic for his role in the fight since his chair hit Yannis Bouroussis, leaving Bouroussis with a "bloody wound on the side of his head." Plate-breakingly bizarre updates inside.