As always in international basketball, it would come down to who would agree to play for the U.S. In the current FIBA rankings, Serbia is #2 and Germany #3.
I was thinking of them, too, but wasn't sure how deep their bench of NBA-caliber players would be. IIRC from the Olympics they had a halfway decent starting five — Jokic alone makes them a medal contender — and then some Euro league types filling out the roster.
They should have done another edit with Brooks' pep talk for the final game: "You lose this game, you'll take it to your fucking graves. "YOUR FUCKING GRAVES."
It is going to be absolute hell for the guys who have to do a Thursday-Saturday turnaround. But from a marketing standpoint it was brilliant for the NHL to jump on that momentum right away.