Okay, USA, let’s see if we can get this right.

The new and (hopefully) improved version of USA Basketball tips off in Las Vegas tonight against a hopelessly overmatched Venezuela team for the opening game of the FIBA Americas Championship.

The 10 teams are split into two groups, which organizers cleverly named Group A and Group B. America will play four games in five nights in the opening round, but don’t get too worked up about the results — it’s a near meaningless exercise that will eliminate just one team from each group. In addition to the aforementioned Chavistas, Team USA’s other likely Group A victims are the U.S. Virgin Islands, Brazil, and Canada.

Then they’ll play four more games against the top four teams from the other group — a crew that includes Argentina, Uruguay, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Panama. At the end of all of this, the teams with the four best overall records advance and the other four go home.

Basically, those first eight games are mere prologue for the one that really matters: The semifinal. That’s the one the U.S. team has to win in order to qualify for the 2008 Olympics.

In light of the past two bronze medal disappointments, the Americans are facing more questions than usual. So there’s no better time than the present to look at some key questions and answers heading into the tournament.

Who is on the team? Once again, America is sending its best teams to the most meaningless tournaments. Much like the awesomely talented 2003 team that blew away the FIBA Americas field before giving way to the Greek tragedy of 2004, this year’s FIBA Americas squad is as stacked as any U.S. team in the last decade.

The key change in the roster between this year and last year’s World Championships is the addition of Kobe Bryant. He should provide the scoring and ball movement that was missing at times a year ago — provided he doesn’t request a trade to Uruguay halfway through the tournament.

The backcourt also got a major upgrade, as Chauncey Billups, Deron Williams, and Jason Kidd replace the Chris Paul and Kirk Hinrich tandem from a year ago. The new guys are all big, which is important because international defenders hand check the bejeezus out of our guards and get away with it.

Can anyone here shoot? Yes, thankfully. The folks at USA Basketball finally got it through their heads that they can’t just run and press good international teams into submission, and have brought several long-range weapons to this year’s party. Billups, Michael Redd, and Mike Miller all are deadly long-range shooters. Kidd, Bryant, Tayshaun Prince, and Carmelo Anthony aren’t bad either.

Alas, having shooters on the roster is only half the battle. They also need to play in the games. With Bryant, Anthony, and LeBron James likely to take up most of the minutes on the wings, and Kidd seemingly in the lead for the starting point guard job, it remains to be seen how much of Redd, Miller, or Billups we’ll see in this tournament.

Have we learned anything from the past? Yes — in fact, this is the most positive aspect of the roster composition. Because the U.S. team hired a permanent coach and president, rather than treating the position as a rotating ambassadorship, we’re seeing the organization learn from the hubris that plagued it in past tournaments.

USA tsar Jerry Colangelo and coach Mike Krzyzewski made sure to get some quality shooters, some big guards, and some nimble defenders (hello, Tyson Chandler and Prince). Meanwhile, they ditched most of the shake-andbake guys that struggle in international ball. It’s tough to win with more than one or two of them on the court at once, and Bryant and James appear to have that quota covered.

Finally, expect Coach K to pay much more attention to scouting reports. He’d better, after last year’s embarrassment where he couldn’t even name the Greek players that had just carved up his defense like a Haida totem pole.

Who gets to be Brad Miller this time? With 12 players, it’s inevitable that one or two of them aren’t likely to play much. It will not come up in one-sided routs of teams such as Venezuela. But against the heavyweights, look for Coach K to shorten the rotation to nine guys, 10 at most.

The most logical candidates to end up sitting are Prince and Williams. Williams is the no. 3 point guard, and some felt he might have been left off the roster to make way for young phenom Kevin Durant (who heard the words “you’re cut” for the first, last, and only time in his life this week as he was removed from Team USA’s lineup). Prince is caught in a numbers game on the wings and doesn’t provide the shooting of Redd and Miller. Chandler might also play sparingly.

Which opponents are the biggest threats? Argentina is always scary, but they’ve been defanged this time around. NBA stars Manu Ginobili, Fabricio Oberto, Andres Nocioni, and Walter Herrmann are sitting this one out, leaving behind a well-coached and organized team, but one that’s missing its spark.

Brazil is another tough threat, with NBA talent in Denver’s big man Nenê Hilario and Suns guard Leandro Barbosa. But they were seriously underwhelming in last year’s World Championships, with a lack of depth.

After that, we hit the shallow end of the pool pretty fast. Puerto Rico has flashy guards (including Orlando’s Carlos Arroyo and Dallas’s J.J. Barea) but no big ones. Canada has some decent size, but Steve Nash is staying home.

What if they lose? If the U.S. team loses in any of the first eight games, it’s big news, but it would be irrelevant as far as the ultimate goal of qualifying for Beijing next year. A loss in the final would be equally meaningless, as the team would have already qualified by that point.

Losing in the semifinals, however, would be problematic. In that event, the U.S. team would have to play a pre-Olympic qualifier next summer, making it even less likely that the top American talent will sign on for the gig. In fact, it’s possible the children on the “select” team that scrimmaged against the varsity this week would be the contingent chosen for the pre-Olympic tourney.

One hopes it will not come to that, though. With a much smarter approach from top to bottom, some of the best individual talent we’ve ever had on a U.S. team, and a field of opponents far weaker than the one we saw in Japan a year ago, the U.S. team is an overwhelming favorite to crush the field. Let’s hope the team backs up our optimism this time.

jhollinger@nysun.com