With Team USA Men’s Basketball team winning their last elimination round game against France, the seemingly unstoppable American squad looks quite vulnerable heading into the quarterfinals of the 2016 Olympics in Rio. This, after entering the fourth quarter with a 12-point lead. Ninety-one to Serbia? Even without France’s leader Tony Parker on the floor, Team USA struggled to play defense as a team, giving up 18 points to both Nando De Colo and Thomas Heurtel. On the other hand, however, that more of the same also means yet another game that came down to the wire that, on paper, Team USA should have won handily. Although a clutch of perennial powers have all creakily descended from their respective peaks – namely Spain, Argentina and the hosts Brazil – no longer is Team USA expected to roll like so many know-it-alls worldwide presumed when we got here.
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“But you start playing better competition, you see these teams are pretty good”. The gold medal game is Sunday, the last day of the Rio Games. Team USA has nearly been knocked out three times over the past week. The U.S. shot 37 percent from beyond the arc, while France shot a measly 26 percentage.
Cavaliers star Kyrie Irving had a comparatively quiet game, and struggled struggled to contain France on the perimeter, but still closed out the game for Team USA.
It’s the one with a roster loaded with skilled and experienced National Basketball Association players, an overall No. 1 draft pick, a backcourt featuring two guards with championship rings and a strong belief it can capture gold in Brazil.
However, in addition to the miscommunication that has yielded backdoor layups, the switches have often led to mismatches that opposing teams have exploited.
The reaches, swipes and bumps that would routinely go ignored by the officials here have been called as fouls in the Olympics.
The play of the game came from Kyrie Irving in the fourth quarter. “I talked to a team about that”.
“I think we’re getting getting better offensively and we have to get better defensively”. The point guard, as Nets WFAN radio analyst Tim Capstraw is fond of telling me, is the focal point of any defense.
Carmelo Anthony, seeking an unprecedented third men’s basketball Olympic gold medal, averages 15.2 points and 5.0 rebounds.
“This isn’t a tournament that we’re going to just dominate”, he said. Which 3-point shooters need to be rotated to the hardest? Pedestrian efforts are not going to cut it, even with the talent advantage.
France kept it close early and was down by only nine points at the half, 55-46, as they kept finding ways to get through the American defensive press.
Golden State’s Kevin Durant, the 2014 NBA Most Valuable Player and four-time NBA scoring champion, leads the USA squad with 16.8 points a game and averages 4.4 rebounds and 3.4 assists as well. Venezuela trailed 16-6 after the first quarter and that was after scoring four points in the final 27 seconds of the frame.
“It’s been rising for a while”, said Australian assistant coach Luc Longley, who played on three Olympic teams and won three championships with the Chicago Bulls.
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Despite looking shaky in the last few games, Team USA is undefeated at 5-0 as the quarterfinals get underway.
