LAS VEGAS — Mason Plumlee of the Denver Nuggets paid a visit to the N.B.A.’s annual summer league here in the desert last month and, as a spectator, found his gaze drawn to the base of the baskets at the old Thomas & Mack Center.

Plumlee was nagged by the thought that the basket stanchions looked no farther away from the baseline than they did on that fateful night five years earlier, when a U.S.A. Basketball scrimmage inside the same arena was brought to a halt after a gruesome lower leg fracture sustained by Paul George.

Plumlee was on the Thomas & Mack floor then as a soon-to-be surprising addition to the U.S. team that would proceed to Spain and win that year’s FIBA World Cup. The scary scenes that followed George’s harrowing landing won’t soon be forgotten by anyone who saw them — particularly from close range, in real time, like Plumlee did.

“What’s crazy is that I’ve seen two of those live,” Plumlee said this week at U.S.A. Basketball’s latest training camp, recalling a similarly ghastly open fracture of the tibia sustained by Louisville’s Kevin Ware in Plumlee’s final game as a collegian at Duke.