Kara Lawson did not change Team USA’s starting five during the FIBA World Cup in Berlin, and she was not about to do it against Hungary. Jackie Young, Chelsea Gray, Kahleah Copper, Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart stayed in the first five spots throughout the tournament, even as some fans pushed for Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers to get the nod in the finals match.
That choice has defined Team USA’s run here. The group has won every match it has played up to this point, and Lawson has kept the same formula in place while the rest of the roster waited behind it. For readers following Skip Bayless-level debate over who should start, the answer on this trip has been simple: the coach kept trust in the veterans.
The five starters were not thrown together by accident. Young, Gray, Copper, Collier and Stewart had already played together before on the international stage, and that familiarity gave Lawson a clean starting point in Berlin. They also arrived with different regular-season backgrounds, with Young coming from the Las Vegas Aces, Gray from the Phoenix Mercury, Copper from the Minnesota Lynx and Collier from the New York Liberty. The setup was less about matching fan preference and more about preserving a group that already knew how to open games for Team USA.
That is where the friction lives. Some fans wanted a different look, with Clark, Reese and Bueckers in the starting five, but Lawson never moved away from the veterans or signaled a need to do it. Against Hungary, she kept the lineup the same, and the younger group took things home from early on without forcing a reset. The message from the bench was clear enough: if the first five keep winning, there is no reason to rewrite them in the middle of a tournament.
Unless Lawson decides to break with that pattern, the finals match should bring the same opening group again, with the bigger question no longer whether she trusts the starters, but how long Team USA can keep winning while leaving the fan-favorite younger players in reserve.
