While a number of National Basketball Association stars declined to suit up for their national teams in the ongoing 16th World Championship in Turkey, there are still 61 players with NBA experience on the rosters of the 24 participating countries.

The NBA brigade is headed by the entire United States team, which, however, does not feature any of the 12 pros that beat reigning World champion Spain in the finals to claim the gold medal in the Beijing Olympics two years ago.

Donning the colors of the Star-Spangled Banner are Chauncey Billups (Denver), Tyson Chandler (Dallas), Stephen Curry (Golden State), Kevin Durant (Oklahoma City), Rudy Gay (Memphis), Eric Gordon (LA Clippers), Danny Granger (Indiana), Andre Iguodala (Philadelphia), Kevin Love (Minnesota), Lamar Odom (LA Lakers), Derrick Rose (Chicago) and Russell Westbrook (Oklahoma City).

There are five 21-year-olds on the Team USA roster – Durant, who last season became the youngest scoring champion in NBA history; Gordon, Love, Rose and Westbrook.

Billups, who along with Chandler was on the U.S. unit that topped the Tournament of the Americas in 2007, is the oldest. He turns 34 on September 25.

The 7-1 Chandler is the only legitimate center on the team although Odom, a natural power forward with the back-to-back NBA champion LA Lakers, is expected to play some minutes in the middle.

The head coach is Duke University’s Mike Krzyzewski. Coach K also piloted the 2008 Olympic team and the 2006 World contingent that settled for the bronze medal in the Japan games.

Boston’s Rajon Rondo was the final cut from the undersized and inexperienced U.S. squad.

With their lack of international exposure and rebounding power, the Americans are likely to face stiff opposition from Spain and Greece in the later stages of this year’s World tourney.

Note that after the round-robin preliminary phase where each team plays five others in their respective groups (A, B, C and D), the rest of the competitions – starting with the Round of 16 – will have a no-room-for-error, single-game knockout format.

Past and current NBAers in the lineups of the other participating countries in Turkey are (active in parentheses):

Argentina – Fabricio Oberto (Washington), Luis Scola (Houston), Andres Nocioni (Sacramento) and Carlos Delfino (Milwaukee); Australia – David Andersen (Toronto) and Patrick Mills (Portland); Brazil – Leandro Barbosa (Toronto) and Anderson Varejao (Cleveland), Alex Garcia and Marcus Vinicius; Canada – Joel Anthony (Miami); China – Yi Jianlian (Washington), Wang Zhizhi and Sun Yue; and Croatia – Zoran Planinic and Roko-Leni Ukic;

France – Boris Diaw (Charlotte), Alexis Ajinca (Dallas), Nicolas Batum (Portland), Ian Mahinmi (Dallas) and Mickael Gelabale; Greece – Antonis Fotsis and Vassilis Spanoulis; Iran – Hamed Haddadi (Memphis); Lebanon – Matt Freije and Jackson Vroman; Lithuania – Linas Kleiza (Toronto); New Zealand – Kirk Penney and Sean Marks; and Puerto Rico – Jose Juan Barea (Dallas), Carlos Arroyo (Miami), Renaldo Balkman (Denver), Peter John Ramos and Daniel Santiago;

Russia – Viktor Khryapa and Sergei Monia; Serbia – Nenad Krstic (Oklahoma City); Slovenia – Primoz Brezec (Milwaukee), Goran Dragic (Phoenix), Beno Udrih (Sacramento), Uros Slokar and Bostjan Nachbar; Spain – Rudy Fernandez (Portland), Marc Gasol (Memphis), Raul Lopez, Juan Carlos Navarro and Jorge Garbajosa; and Turkey – Hidayet Turkoglu (Phoenix) and Ersan Ilyasova.

Current NBA players who opted not to suit up in this year’s World games due to personal or health reasons include France’s Tony Parker, Ronny Turiaf and Joachim Noah, Spain’s Pau Gasol and Jose Calderon, China’s Yao Ming, Argentina’s Manu Ginobili, Turkey’s Mehmet Okur, Brazil’s Nene Hilario, Germany’s Dirk Nowitzki, Russia’s Andrei Kirilenko, and Australia’s Andrew Bogut.