The United States won their third consecutive Olympic men’s basketball title and 15 overall after comfortably beating Serbia 96-66 in the Rio 2016 final at Carioca Arena 1.
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Durant was the top scorer for the USA squad with 30 points overall, but 24 of them coming in the first half, nearly half the team’s total at the break.
Kevin Durant lead Team USA in scoring with 30 points, and Carmelo Anthony passed David Robinson on the all time rebounding list for Team USA during Olympic play.
Anthony has had one of the most illustrious worldwide careers of any US men’s basketball players ever.
Mike Krzyzewski, who will cede the reins of Team USA to Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, guided his third gold-medal winning team, a record for US coaches.
After the Americans lost to Greece in 2006 in the FIBA World Championships at Tokyo, Anthony sat at the postgame podium with Coach K and expressed humility and determination. Anthony said. “I’ve seen both sides of it”.
Team USA’s pool play seemed lackadaisical or disinterested, but the play picked up in the medal round. Though undefeated heading into the final, the USA men’s team flirted with disaster at several points in the tournament, including razor-thin three point victories over France and its gold medal opponent Serbia in Group play. Carmelo Anthony made his Olympics debut in 2004 when the games were in Athens, Greece and he was also only in the National Basketball Association for one year (2003 was his rookie year).
Carmelo Anthony, who was on that 2004 team and the three squads since, became the first male basketball player to win three gold medals at the Olympics.
So how then can we put the fun back into men’s Olympic basketball, a once exciting spectacle that has been increasingly losing its luster since the dizzying spectacle of the 1992 Dream Team?
How will this incarnation of the US national team be remembered?
After the runaway leader, Britain finished second on 27 gold, 23 silver and 17 bronze medals.
“It was a special moment for me”, said the 32-year-old. I got away from that a couple of games, but when knockout rounds started …
“You have the best guy in the world to coach the team now”.
“It was the best thing that happened for us”, centre DeMarcus Cousins said of those wake-up calls.
“We came here and despite what people are saying about this group, being less talented and not blowing teams out, we did a good job of bottling all that up and unleashed it on Serbia”, forward Paul George said. I think we made them (proud).
Spain, which restricted the U.S. to an 82-76 victory in the semifinals, beat Australia 89-88 in a controversial finish to the bronze medal match.
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Anthony checked back into the rout in the final minutes so he could grab a seventh rebound, passing David Robinson for USA record with the 125th in his Olympic career.
