LAS VEGAS — NBA champion coach Mark Daigneault of the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Detroit Pistons’ J.B. Bickerstaff are expected to join USA Basketball coach Erik Spoelstra’s staff for the next two-year cycle for the men’s national team that concludes with the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, according to multiple league sources with direct knowledge of the staff.
The hires are pending approval from the USA Basketball board of directors.
Also on staff is Gonzaga’s Mark Few, who served as an assistant with Spoelstra to Steve Kerr for the previous two-year spin through the 2023 World Cup and 2024 Olympics. The two remain close — Spoelstra’s nephew is a walk-on for Few’s college powerhouse program.
Spoelstra and USA decision makers Grant Hill and Sean Ford plan to hold staff meetings this summer to begin preparations for the 2027 FIBA World Cup in Qatar. Among the business items to tackle for the group will be to identify young, potentially rising stars to fill out the roster; the players for the U.S. team likely won’t be announced until sometime during the 2027 NBA playoffs, if not after.
Unlike other top basketball-playing countries, the U.S. has struggled to recruit elite American stars for the World Cup since FIBA moved the event to the year before the Olympics in 2019. As a result, USAB has finished seventh and fourth in the past two World Cups but is riding a streak of five-consecutive Olympic golds. Playing for the American team at the Qatar tournament next August and September is a pathway for the best young stars to make the Olympic team the following year, though it is not guaranteed.
For instance, Anthony Edwards and Tyrese Haliburton played for the U.S. at the World Cup in the Philippines in 2023 and continued on for Team USA at the Paris games, while stars like Jalen Brunson and Paolo Banchero did not make the previous Olympic team.
Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault is set to join the USA Basketball staff as an assistant coach. (Luke Hales / Getty Images)
The World Cup is the cleanest path to qualify for the Olympics (there are seven spots for the highest-finishing teams based on geographic zones). But in the Americans’ case for the next two years, they do not need to be at their best for the World Cup – the host nation gets an automatic spot in the Olympic tournament.
Spoelstra’s eventual successor is likely to come from the group of assistants he just picked. Kerr was an assistant to Gregg Popovich before being promoted, and Spoelstra served under Kerr before being announced as the next U.S. coach last summer.
Daigneault, 41, steered the Thunder to the 2025 NBA title and had them in Game 7 of the 2026 Western Conference finals before falling to the San Antonio Spurs. Bickerstaff, 47, coached the Pistons to the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference last season and is head of the coaches’ trade association. Few, 63, is responsible for building the Zags into a perennial NCAA contender since taking over the program in 1999. He will be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame later this year.
Training camp for the World Cup is expected to start on or around Aug. 1. The Americans will play exhibition games in Macau and Abu Dhabi before continuing on to Doha for the three-week World Cup tournament.