In the end, despite all of the doubts, the Americans were too good for the rest of the competition. Team USA took care of business, as they romped their way to a gold medal at the FIBA Basketball World Cup.
Serbia had no chance in Sunday’s final match, going down convincingly 129-92 as the Yanks danced their way to victory. (France beat Lithuania 95-93 on Saturday for the bronze.) Per the AP:
“It kind of was, again, a smack to our face, saying the U.S. was sending the B-team to go play in the World Cup,” forward Kenneth Faried said. “Just because LeBron’s not here, Kobe’s not here, (Kevin) Durant’s not here, doesn’t mean anything. We can step up and win the gold, too. That’s what we did tonight.”
Tournament MVP Kyrie Irving made all six of his 3-point attempts and scored 26 points, and the U.S. repeated as world champion for the first time by crushing Serbia 129-92 on Sunday in the Basketball World Cup. […] James Harden added 23 points for the Americans, who made 11 of 16 3-pointers in a sensational-shooting first half, adding one final romp to a tournament full of them.
“I think the results were dominant, but we had spurts of dominance in a lot of games,” U.S. coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “And we had tough games and then all of a sudden we’d have a spurt and it looked like we dominated. Tonight we had like about a 35-minute spurt.”
Kyrie>Serbia , maybe some people will now come to the conclusion that “the world has caught up” phrase is a BULLSHIT. Every team besides France had their main guys& depleted USA destroyed all&every one of them easily.
“Every team besides France had their main guys” Er, no they didn’t. I’m not saying it would have made any difference to USA still winning the Gold (It wouldn’t have), but pretty much every team they played was missing at least 1 starter.
If someone only watched USA’s games, I can see how this competition might have been underwhelming, but as someone who watched a lot of the games, I really really enjoyed this tournament. Roll on 2019…
everything is normal in the basketball world: america is world champs and james harden doesn’t understand why should give any effort when the other team has the ball.
How many players on this roster would have made Team USA if all of the stars decided to play?
Well, the world did catch up, then the US reorganized, regrouped and came back with a vengeance.
Pretty much, nice way to sum it up.
Really curious to see what kind of team Canada can throw together, and how they can compete. They have a glut of young NBA players available for their roster with the only weak spot probably being the centre position.
Yeah,but i’ll believe it,when i see it.
Too bad USA was that on fire, I was hoping for a little more close game.
it seems to me that of all the teams only the nation of the champions fail to appreciate and praise the journey and fight of their teams. Young men represented your country and came back champions, anything less than pride at that is beyond my comprehention.
Might be a bit of a stretch, but anyone else think this team might be better than the ’12 Olympic team? They just had a really great mix of players and they worked really well together.
I don’t think it would be unreasonable to take a starting five of Davis, Faried, Durant, Harden or Thompson, and Irving for 2016. Bring Lebron off the bench. I reckon a combo of Faried/Durant in the front court is better than Lebron/Durant.