Last Sunday, Sept. 14, was the FIBA World Cup final, the second largest event in international basketball, just behind the Olympic gold medal game. The U.S. men’s basketball team trounced Serbia by a final score of 129-92. The United States’ recent dominance has been unprecedented in any world sport competition up to this point, and it is time for Americans to take notice of this success.

The month of July saw the FIFA World Cup take over the sporting discourse in the United States, even though the U.S. National Team pales in comparison to the vast majority of international competition. Soccer dominates a hold over culture in the majority of the sports-playing world.

No team has yet exercised such effortless victory on a global scale as the U.S. team did. Italy has been underwhelming since winning the 2006 cup, and two of their previous three victories came before World War II. Brazil took home the cup in 1994 and 2002, but even then they were not blowing teams away. They were the favorite, but not a shoe-in, and the benefactor of a combination of aging stars and young guns.

Yet, America has progressed so much further than the rest of the world in basketball. The United States is the birthplace of basketball, but it is also a country that markets baseball as its pastime. For a while, the common argument was that basketball was not as widely enjoyed across the world. It was not easy to play from a young age unless taught, nor was it  fun for people of all sizes. That is not the case anymore. Countries like Spain, France, Serbia, Lithuania, Slovenia and Turkey all have legitimate basketball leagues. In China, aging NBA stars are practically bigger than One Direction.

With the absence of many of the United States’ and the NBA’s best players, such as LeBron James and Kevin Durant, who would have been the best player on every other international team, the competition was not even close.

In the FIFA semi-finals this year, Brazil was without its two best players and they were dismantled 7-1 by Germany. In comparison, the United States basketball team still dominates when its backup players are on the court.

The United States is so far ahead of world basketball competition that the only thing that can possibly challenge them is their own lack of effort.

There were lulls for this year’s squad. There were halftime deficits for a team that won every game by at least 22 points. The fact of the matter is that the United States owns the world basketball scene. The team may not have the killer instincts that the ’92 Dream Team did. It may not have the full arsenal of talent that the country has to offer. But, it is still king of the hill. It is time basketball started getting more credit as the true representation of American athletics. It has drama, it has excitement, it has grace and it has force.

America might do well by starting to love its basketball more than it loves its football. In a world where the NFL is spiraling in the wake of multiple scandals, MLB viewership is plummeting and the MLS is years away from being nearly as competitive as many other soccer leagues, maybe what U.S. sports fans need is something to hang their hat on. That something could be a gold medal every two years in hoops.

 A version of this article appeared in the Tuesday, Sept. 23 print edition. Email Bobby Wagner at [email protected].