RIO DE JANEIRO – Everyone in American basketball circles understands that there will never, ever be another Dream Team.
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Winning in style is no longer the target.
Thompson finally had the three-point shooting eruption that everyone was expecting and reminded everyone that he was one of the Americans’ best players at the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup.
If one thing is true about this Olympics, it is that any broadcasting outlet having a monopoly on coverage of our national team is a sad, sad thing. This is a USA Basketball program specifically revamped to avoid a trap year such as 2016.
“I thought personally”, Paul George admitted after Sunday’s 100-97 win over France, “we were going to dominate these games and they were going to come easy”.
“We’ve gotta be prepared for a grind-out game”, Durant continued.
Give the Americans that much.
They don’t necessarily need to play better to win the gold.
“They’ve still got a team full of All-Stars”, France center Rudy Gobert said.
“What reporters always forget is you must play very good in offense because they will keep scoring”, Collet said. They’re still the favorite. “Maybe us”, he said.
“I think what this shows”, executive director of USA Basketball Jerry Colangelo was saying, “is that we’re not invincible”. Pacific against Manu Ginobili, Andres “Chapu” Nocioni and Argentina, the last team to knock US out of an worldwide tournament back in 2004.
There was, after the close call against Australia, a temptation to chalk up that game as one that would jolt the US into regrouping and playing with a sharper focus, that they would morph into the dominant group they were expected to be.
Nobody has done that in a decade, with the Americans seeking their 50th consecutive tournament victory Sunday. “We come into these games with the same mindset – to dominate”. “They execute extremely well, and that’s a team that’s been playing together for a while”. Thanks largely to the efforts of Thompson, who scored 30 points, and Kyrie Irving, who set a USA Olympic record with 12 assists, the United States held off a late surge from France. The Americans’ last two contests were more a case of being unable to pull away comfortably, even after they seemingly were in control.
“I think we just let up a little bit (defensively) and you can’t let up in this kind of tournament”, said Thompson. “Even with [Thompson] going off and making all those tough shots, we still had a chance to win”.
Krzyzewski lamented what he described as a fourth-quarter letdown when the Americans “felt like we had the game won”.
The United States will not know their quarterfinal opponent until after the final Group B matches today but regardless will have to up their game considerably if they hope to make it to the final.
With Parker surely back at the controls. He’s taken 15 shots in iso situations, three times as many as any other US player.
“At the end of the day, no one will ask you anything else except if you have won”, Krzyzewski said.
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“There were many other things that were supposed to be installed, and they could not”, said Dubi, who said Ukrainian suppliers had failed to deliver at the last minute, forcing organizers to improvise.
