On the right one, “Smile”.
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“There’s a lot of movement”, Durant said of Spain. He also had seven rebounds, seven assists and two steals.
Argentina made its move to take a 25-point American lead down to 16 (or fewer, had it connected on its last shot of the second quarter) at the half, but the thin Team Argentina bench just could not compete with the series of younger NBA All-Stars that reliably peeled themselves off of coach Mike Krzyzewski’s bench.
After all the talk about how Australia, Serbia and France had pushed the Americans all the way until the end of their last three wins, this was different.
“We were lacking a little bit of juice after the tough, tough game against Brazil”, Argentina guard Manu Ginobili said. “When you have fans like that, it’s fantastic, man, for both teams”.
The United States basketball national team will be in a great challenge as they face a familiar foe, Argentina, in the men’s quarterfinal showdown in Rio Olympics today.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Argentina small forward Andres Nocioni (13) loose ball control of the ball against US forward Draymond Green (14) and U.S. forward Kevin Durant (5) during the men’s basketball quarterfinals in the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games at Carioca Arena 1.
The U.S., now two wins away from a third straight Olympic gold medal, hasn’t lost in Olympic play since.
“The only thing that we changed was our passion and our energy”, said Durant.
Kevin Durant lead the team with 27 points, and during the game passed Michael Jordan for 4th all time on the Team USA scoring list. It’s shooting 51 percent in all other situations. So I think they have been really stagnant offensively. “I had a good one-on-one matchup every time so I tried to take advantage”. “My smile is contagious and my energy and enthusiasm for the game is contagious and I try to spread that to my teammates”.
Despite trailing by double-digits in the first quarter, Team USA was able to perform a beat down over Argentina by a score of 105-78. He was called soft, overrated, insecure and worse. The power of just being, you know, the USA, I guess.
When the USA team convened for training camp in Las Vegas, center DeAndre Jordan offered Durant some advice. I know if I go out there and be who I am, the outcome will dictate itself. However, at the same time they have played quality basketball for four matches with the likes of Luis Scola and Facundo Campazzo playing great basketball.
They’ll never meet again in the Olympics.
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Durant stepped up early on with offense when his team fell behind, and sustained it throughout.
