Win that, and it will be the France-Spain victor (two of the best teams in the Olympics) next.
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The USA Basketball men’s national team has won every game in group play.
Thompson ended an Olympic-long slump with seven 3-pointers and 30 points, and the Americans needed nearly all of them to hold off France 100-97 on Sunday. They went from a 16-point lead, 78-62, thanks to some hot shooting from Klay Thompson, to being held scoreless for nearly two-and-a-half minutes to close the game.
Thomas Heurtel and Nando de Colo led France with 18 points each.
The alarm bells continued to ring on Sunday as the United States allowed France, playing without talismanic point guard Tony Parker, to rally from a 16-point deficit late in the third quarter to turn a predicted rout into another nail-biter. Andres Nocioni (!) scored 37 points in a double overtime win over Brazil in what is the game of the tournament so far. America’s women’s team faces off with Japan in their first game of the knockout stages on Tuesday. While France has talent, they haven’t played well this Olympics, and Team USA should be definitely concerned going into the elimination rounds. After Doug Collins hit two free throws with three seconds remaining to give the US a 50-49 lead, the Soviets had three shots to win the game. But as valiant an effort as France put up, it was not able to hold off the pure dominance of Klay Thompson. Durant added 17 points.
Still, the US brings the most talented and deepest roster into the elimination rounds as well as the highest scoring.
That hooks us back into this 2016 team in Rio. “Everyone is wondering when this team will start locking teams down on offense as they have done in most games during coach Mike Krzyzewski’s 10-year reign”.
Kyrie Irving ends the French mini-run with a jumper, but Charlotte Hornets forward Nicolas Batum gets fouled from three. Its 130 points scored per 100 possessions are 10 points better than second-ranked Australia, per John Schuhmann of NBA.com.
More importantly, the two players on the 12-man roster with previous Olympic experience have largely lived up to expectations and led the way for the rookies. Kevin Durant had 3 of his 4 game-total assists during one stretch of the quarter.
The three Warriors on the Olympic team had very different games. But he’s also glossing over the fact that Team USA is much bigger and stronger and faster and flat out better than the rest of the competition that it shouldn’t need to grind out wins.
I haven’t thrown in the towel on my hopes for this team winning the Gold Medal. To push the U.S. as close as they did without the services of Tony Parker, who was rested because of a sore toe, suggests they have good things ahead. Also, the improvement helped spring loose the struggling Klay Thompson. While the Americans were celebrating, one referee said he blew his whistle due to the horn sounding and decided that there should be one second left in the game. “But that’s not going to win us gold. We’ve got to lock up, and we will”.
USA’s opponent in the quarterfinals is Argentina.
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Chris Goulding led Australia with 22 points. Venezuela missed 39 of their 60 shots to finish the game at 35 percent from the field.
