“Having games at home in every country I think is potentially very good,” Ginobili said. “But then if you’re not able to play with your best players ...”

The sentence did not need finishing. Imagine what World Cup qualifying would look like in soccer if, say, neither England’s Premier League nor Spain’s La Liga had to release its players to participate.

Ginobili and his teammate with the Spurs, Pau Gasol, who plays for Spain, both admit that they struggle to imagine the day that the N.B.A. would ever consent to the concept of international breaks during the season so that players could leave the teams paying them.

“Probably not in my lifetime,” Gasol said with a smile.

Trying to summarize the ongoing battle between FIBA and Euroleague officials about making more than a few fringe Euroleaguers available to participate in upcoming qualifiers, in our allotted space, would be another serious struggle. But even if those entities eventually do find a level of greater compromise than we’re seeing at the moment, there’s no denying that a gaping void will linger in the qualifying process without N.B.A. involvement.

When the 2017-18 N.B.A. season commenced, 113 international players from 42 countries and territories occupied roster spots in a league with only 510 available. But playing out their N.B.A. dreams means they can’t help their countries now even if they want to, whether we’re talking Puerto Rico’s ever-gritty J.J. Barea, Greece’s incomparable Giannis Antetokounmpo or the Latvian unicorn Porzingis from the Knicks.

For the veteran guard Jose Calderon of the Cleveland Cavaliers — who quickly points out that none of the 12 players on his Spanish squad that won a bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and again at EuroBasket 2017 just a few months ago are on the qualifying roster — FIBA’s mistake was forging ahead with the format switch without polling more of the participants.

“I understand what FIBA is trying to do,” Calderon said. “But at the end of the day, I think everything is impossible if you don’t talk to the players. Those are the first ones you have to involve.