France defeated the United States, 83-76, in the Olympic group play opener Sunday at Saitama Super Arena in suburban Tokyo.
Don’t act so surprised.
Team USA is not the Dream Team. It is not even close to the American teams in 2009, 2012 and 2016 that won three straight gold medals without losing a game under Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. The Americans may have the most NBA All Stars, are loaded with offensive talent and built to be the best shooting team in the tournament. but international basketball is a team sport and shooters need to make shots. .
The French were the better team, outscoring Team USA, 16-2 in the final four and a half minutes when the Americans’ offensive execution went off the rails. They played with more energy, more focus, got better shots, were better defensively in critical moments and turned loose guard Evan Fourier, a Boston Celtics’ role player, for 28 points as France gave the U.S. its first loss in Olympic competition since the semi-finals of the 2004 tournament.
Gregg Popovich, who claimed he was thinking about France for two years, is still trying to find a way to stop Fourier, who scored 22 points against a lesser USA team in a 2019 victory in the World Cup in China. Of course, he also had problems containing Australia’s veteran guard Patty Mills in an exhibition loss.
This is a European power that Team USA will have to beat if it wants to win a fourth straight gold medal. But Gregg Popovich’s team will have to start playing with a sense of urgency and versatile 6-10 Kevin Wayne Durant of the Brooklyn Nets, their most talented player and the unquestioned star of the 2016 gold medal team, will have to show up.
Durant scored just 10 points and played just 15 minutes with major foul trouble, shooting just 4 for 12 before eventually fouling out. Durant didn’t get much help for Team USA’s other big name Damien Lillard of the Portland Trail Blazers, who shot just 3 for 10 and was so bad Popovich pulled him in the fourth quarter.
The USA was beaten in every aspect of the game, including bench coaching. Team USA shot just 10 for 32 from the international three and it might have been worse of guard Jrue Holiday, who was one of three players along Devin Booker and Khris Middleton who arrived in Japan late Saturday night after playing in the NBA finals and taking a trans-Pacific flight, hadn’t gotten his second wind. The Milwaukee Bucks point guard, who is the team’s best perimeter defender, went off for 18 points and 7 rebounds off the bench for the Americans. But Booker, a pure shooter, shot just 1 for 6.
Team USA was haunted by the same problems it had during its four game exhibition run in Vegas when it lost to both Nigeria and Australia. the USA struggled most of the game to generate easy offense in the half court and struggled to deal with French center Rudy Golbert, who had 12 points and nine points and controlled the paint defensively in the second half when France went with a bigger lineup.
The problem was magnified after Durant picked up his fourth foul with more than 16 minutes left in the game. After Durant went to the bench, the French went on an run, turning a 49-45 deficit into a six point lead heading into the fourth quarter.
Holiday looked like he might single handedly bail the USA out, but France refused to go away. Fourier drained a three pointer off a scramble play with 1 minute to play to give France a 76-74 lead and the U.S. missed five shots on the next possession with Zack LaVine, Durant and Holiday missing three wide open threes to seal the game.
The U.S. will still likely be a factor in the gold medal race. Durant hopefully won’t be this bad again. With group games remaining against Iran and Czech Republic, they should still advance to the knockout round. But they no longer look like the slam dunk they were prior to the tournament. They can rationalize the fact they had an incomplete roster because some players took a pass because of the Covid shortened season, three missed training camp because of the championship series and another key player guard Bradley Beal never even made the trip after testing positive for Covid in Vegas.
