USA were knocked out in the quarterfinals in the FIBA Basketball World Cup after an 89-79 loss to France on Wednesday. Instead of playing in the semifinals, the team will have to compete with Serbia for better ranking.

How bad was this outcome? First, it put an end to the 24-straight-win record in the World Cup (World Championship) and the 48-straight-win record in top international events (World Cup + Summer Olympics) of USA.

Second, the last time the team lost in a tournament like this happened in the 2006 World Championship in Japan. Back then, USA were defeated by Greece 101-95 in the semifinals but beat Argentina later to rank No. 3 in the end. By contrast, even if they win their last two games, USA will rank No. 5, only better than their record (No. 6) in the 2002 World Championship.

So what happened? It has to be something more than "USA, don't get comfortable" by Kobe Bryant that ruined the team's title-defending trip.

Simply speaking, USA did not take their best players to China. Like we said earlier, this team may be the weakest USA team in history. Their best player was Kemba Walker who only played the playoffs twice (and failed to pass the first round) in his eight-year-long career. The team had no clear leader and Donovan Mitchell, a second-year rookie, had to play that role.

If you saw the USA's games, it's easy to tell that this team had no established system, either in offense or in defense. Their players relied too much on individual ability, which led to excessive isolation play in offense and too many risky attempts to steal in defense.

Some may argue that despite all the above problems, these are 12 NBA players who come from the world's best basketball league and thus should be able to defeat any opponents. That continued to be true until the quarterfinals because in the last five minutes of the game, France too, had four NBA players - Rudy Gobert, Nikolas Batum, Evan Fournier and Frank Ntilikina - on the court, not to mention that Nando de Colo played two years in the San Antonio Spurs.

Some may blame head coach Gregg Popovich for relying on a small-ball squad instead of giving more trust to Brook Lopez and Myles Turner who could have made Gobert uncomfortable with their shooting range. However, the truth is, Lopez was two for 16 from the 3-point line all tournament and Turner only got two points in the game against France. Besides, whoever wanted to blame Popovich might forget that Gobert has bigger size than Turner and is quicker than Lopez, meaning that putting the two on the court would not be necessarily helpful.

Wednesday's loss should not change the fact that the NBA is still the best basketball league in the world and America still has the best basketball players on earth, but it should help USA realize that the rest of the world are getting better and they are catching up fast.

That said, this loss was not all bad news; at least it could become a good motivator for USA to send a truly incredible squad next year to the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. 21 years ago, Arvydas Sabonis led the former Soviet Union to eliminate USA in the semifinals in the Summer Olympics in Seoul. After that, America sent the "Dream Team" led by Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan to the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona to show the rest of the world "how basketball is played."

11 years ago, after being humiliated repeatedly in the 2002 World Championship, the 2004 Summer Olympics and the 2006 World Championship, USA sent the "Redeem Team" led by Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Jason Kidd to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing to take their glories back.

Now that USA again failed in the World Cup, which "Avengers" will they bring to Tokyo in 2020?