Allen Iverson and the U.S. were dreadful from the perimeter against the Puerto Ricans. Jamie Squire/Getty Images

So apparently we're supposed to fly the flags at half-staff today because the U.S. isn't the king of the courts anymore. It's official now -- the rest of the world supposedly finally has caught up to America in men's basketball. The U.S. team's 92-73 loss to Puerto Rico on Sunday -- the first American defeat since NBA players began participating in the Games in 1992 -- was the death knell for U.S. dominance, at least that's what we're told.

Don't believe a word of it.

The loss to Puerto Rico didn't prove that America is no longer the world's leader in terms of basketball talent or expertise. It didn't prove that NBA players have forgotten -- or that they never learned -- how to play as a team. In fact, it didn't prove anything that wasn't already obvious, which is that the way American basketball is structured makes the U.S. uniquely ill-suited to international competitions like the Olympics.

There are almost as many reasons for the U.S. decline in international play as there were missed American 3-pointers on Sunday, but the main one is this: American NBA players -- and most of their employers -- value NBA success above Olympic gold, and as long as that's the case, the Games will never be more than a secondary pursuit in America. That means the U.S. will always have to fight tooth-and-nail to get to the top of the medal stand in men's basketball. Our days of cruising through the field with whatever team we can slap together are long over.

Everyone knows that the U.S. doesn't field all of its best players because NBA stars treat international competition like the military draft -- they'll serve their hitch if their name comes up, but don't expect them to re-enlist. Do you think the Puerto Rican squad would be celebrating today if it had faced an American team with Shaquille O'Neal at center, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett at forward, and Tracy McGrady and Kobe Bryant in the backcourt? Only one of those players, Duncan, is a member of the current U.S. squad. With all due respect to their teammates, America didn't set the standard for basketball excellence across the globe by trotting out the likes of Carlos Boozer and Shawn Marion.

This much is true. The rest of the world has made enough basketball progress that the U.S. can no longer dominate international competitions like the Olympics the way it once did. America can't just take the first 12 NBA so-called stars who agree to play, give them a couple of weeks of practice and expect them to steamroll opposing teams who have been playing and practicing as team for years, not weeks. The Olympics are a particular type of competition, different enough from the NBA in terms of rules and general style that the U.S. needs to choose its players much more carefully and prepare them much more fully in order to continue piling up gold medals.

At the risk of sounding like an American apologist, maybe the remarkable thing is that the U.S. had won the past three Olympic gold medals despite the disadvantages inherent in its approach to the Games. Critics of the U.S. squad -- and of the American team that finished sixth in the World Championships two years ago -- make it sound as if the foreign squads are like orchestras, beautifully constructed and interdependent, while the Americans are just a collection of soloists in search of their next dunk, which given the length of time the U.S. team had to prepare, is unfair.

Expecting a U.S. team, particularly a diluted one, to dominate Olympic play under the current circumstances is like asking, say, the Argentinean team to enter the NBA playoffs and win the championship. Their inability to do it would say more about the nature of the competition than the quality of their team. The same is true of the U.S. and the Games.

We're still the best at basketball, but the Olympics will forevermore be a difficult place for us to prove it.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button topic every Monday on SI.com.