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One by one, they started dropping out. Dwight Howard: no Worlds. Kobe Bryant: no Worlds. Dwyane Wade. LeBron James. Chris Paul. Not a single member of the star-comprised 2008 USA Olympic Basketball team would be wearing their country’s colors this summer for the FIBA World Championship, a tournament this team hasn’t won in 16 years.

The “B-Team” label stems from the media’s disappointment and — like that annoying kid in middle school who wasn’t even part of your group — their incessant need to give everyone and everything a clever nickname (case in point: the Miami trio’s nicknaming bonanza). I don’t see 2010’s US Men’s team as a consolation prize, and frankly, the “B-Team” label is a bit insulting to a no-nonsense, hardworking group of up-and-comers, the kind who value loyalty, pride, and competition. The Lean Team, as I’m more fond of calling them (yes, I’m joining in), is full of young, unselfish, and exciting leaders the likes of Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose, and Eric Gordon. These are guys I look forward to having as the faces of the NBA, the guys I’d be glad seeing win championships. For a good, respectful look at this year’s squad, go ahead and read Chris Sheridan’s piece on ESPN.com.

Now, the reason I’m here today is that USA Basketball is in dire need of a logo upgrade. This focus and committed team doesn’t need anything particularly flashy or clever, so I think we can move past the “star integrated into the A” gimmick, much better relegated to All-Star Game duty, well as the over-simplified (and redundant) basketball, a look that would actually be kind of cool in its retro-ness if we hadn’t been staring at that same logo for decades.

Here’s my idea for something a little cleaner, leaner, and more modern:

The USA Basketball logo encompasses the whole organization, including the Women’s Basketball divisions, but for the sake of this exercise, let’s focus on why The Lean Team specifically embodies this kind of logo.

This is an undersized group of players with only one true center, meaning to succeed, they will have to lean and depend on each other. They’re going to have to get scrappy and exhibit some blue-collar tendencies — and they have been. This is a group coming together at the right time, sacrificing for the good of the team to accomplish something more important than individual feats.

The strong, blocky structure of the logo represents this sturdy foundation, fortified and difficult to tumble. The strip of five stars — for the five Americans on court at any given time — serves almost as a joining mechanism, with the stars bolting together the ideals of the United States and basketball’s wonderful spirit of competition. And the final, larger star, while admittedly a bit Nativical (if that’s not a word, it sure should be), serves as a clear but classy way of portraying our Lean Team’s singular focus on excellence.

The 2010 FIBA World Championship begins today. If you have ESPN or access to ESPN3.com, I urge you to support this team.

Font family in logo: Kenyan Coffee.

Back in April, John Gruber fleetingly mentioned the possibility of an all-new iPhone OS-based Apple TV – an intriguing idea, but one I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around. The iPhone OS was created as a touch interface, and I had a hard time fathoming the idea of a big iPhone or iPad with small, sparse icons drifting along on a big HDTV, and more importantly, a great user experience didn’t seem likely with a setup like that.

A few weeks ago, after drooling over my brother’s iPad and its ability to stream content from the likes of ABC and Netflix, something Gruber said back in April finally clicked with me: TV Apps.

Half of the people who hack their current Apple TVs do so because they want to do two things: stream Netflix and stream Hulu. If they get it working, the performance is sub-par at best – buggy, clunky, and terribly un-Apple – but what’s one to do if Apple themselves won’t make it happen? Then the iPad showed up, proving that Apple’s iPhone OS can capably handle heavy streaming video, and that major content providers are willing to step up to the plate and take advantage of the platform. More importantly (and yes, you’re way ahead of me), Netflix and ABC working on an iPad means they can work on an iPhone OS-based Apple TV as well, which prompted me to tweet this on May 21st, after reading up on Google TV:

The next Apple TV needs the A4 chip and should run the iPhone OS to take advantage of streaming apps – Netflix, ABC, Pandora….

Furthermore, the idea of the iPhone OS on a 57″ HDTV wasn’t so loco anymore. Enlarge the icons, and you’ve got a grid of squares, which is exactly the interface that most other media center applications utilize. Think of Boxee, which has “apps” that you can install – a YouTube app, a Comedy Central one, even a Netflix plugin – and these apps reside on your screen as part of a grid.

The more I think about it, the more the iPhone OS sounds like most modern media center operating systems.

With that in mind, I got to cranking on Photoshop the other weekend, mocking up how Apple might approach this sort of reincarnation of their little “hobby” project.

Cut to Friday, when Engadget gets wind of an iPhone OS Apple TV coming to us in the near future. Lots of good stuff is apparently on the way, including 1080p, cloud storage, a tiny form factor, that A4 chip I mentioned, a $99 price tag, and, of course, the new operating system. Obviously, the project gathered some steam thanks to Google’s announcements at I/O, but nevertheless, it’s as good of an excuse as any for me to show these proof-of-concept mockups for what the Apple TV 4.0 could look like.

By default, I believe Apple would have it’s main-function apps along the dock: Movies, TV Shows, Music, Photos, and then the iTunes and App stores. (I’ve eliminated Podcasts and Internet Radio as self-contained apps, despite them being prominently placed in Apple TV’s current interface. If we’re moving to the iPhone OS, I think they might be integrated into the core Music app, much like on the iPod Touch.) Above the dock we have a couple of rows for additional apps, some from Apple, some from the App Store. Like with the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, you can have pages worth of content.

This setup further addresses one of the original issues with the Apple TV device. To quote this Macworld article from 2009, “The Apple TV should be iTunes for the television; instead, it’s the iTunes Store for your television.” (Or, perhaps more appropriately, the Apple TV should be the iPod or iPad for your TV.) This iPhone OS design is more about the content you want – your movies, shows, music, Netflix queue, favorite ABC programs – rather than what Apple wants to sell you, which is relegated to that singular iTunes Store icon.

On Friday, John Gruber wondered about this kind of interface and how we might interact with it. No, it won’t be direct touch, and no, Apple won’t force everyone to buy a $200 iPhone just to use their Remote app. The answer, I think, is pretty darn obvious: we use the provided remote like we always have. Instead of touching and swiping this grid of squares, we navigate them with an Apple Remote, just like the current Apple TV interface, and just like other media centers such as Boxee. (Placing a glowing box or other indicator around the selected app icon.)

Is it as efficient as touching and swiping? No, but it’s worked for us till now, hasn’t it? Navigate, click, and your app is open. Simple. For those who do have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, I imagine Apple could add some special features to their Remote app, such as a touchable list of all your apps (like the list you’ll find in Settings), or perhaps a landscape grid of your apps, a small-scale representation of your on-screen applications, swipeable and touchable, allowing you to easily switch apps from another room.

Another thing Gruber touched on was the idea of a web browser on the Apple TV, much like Google TV. Personally, I don’t see this happening, mainly because of user experience. I don’t think they can come up with a way to have the “real web” on a gigantic TV without it being awkward, clunky, or difficult to view, so I don’t see them including it at all. Not to mention, I really don’t think people want the web on their TV as much as we’re led to think. At the very most, Apple will probably add a universal search feature – double-clicking the menu button, perhaps – that will search your purchased files as well as select streaming sites online.

As with many of Apple’s products, it’s not that they were the first to think of it, it’s that they were the ones to do it right. The minds and creatives there are obviously much more talented than I am, so I can’t wait to see what they come up with. Generally speaking, the Apple TV has been a disappointment, but I think if this is the sort of direction Jobs & Co. look to be taking us, we may be in for a treat.

View these images in full resolution on Pixel Bodega’s Flickr page.

These mockups make heavy use of the passionate and beautiful work of others:

• Many of the icons are part of the Flurry pack at Iconfactory.
• The great starry background was created by Sebastiaan de With over at the Cocoia blog.