Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone breaks world record, Noah Lyles takes bronze
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone easily wins the 400-meter hurdles, Noah Lyles battles COVID and settles for bronze, and the U.S. men’s basketball team survives a scare against Serbia.
PARIS — We have to get used to it.
As a nation that approaches each Olympics as a crowning achievement rather than a competition, we need to feel the tension, the effort and the intensity from possession to possession. That intensity is only possible when you have a respect for what it takes to win and a healthy fear of the prospect of defeat.
We must understand that what we saw on Thursday at the Bercy Arena in an epic semi-final against Serbia is the new normal. We must admit that the world is gradually getting behind the US team.
You are almost there.
Just not yet.
Just when it looked like this team of at least six future Hall of Famers was about to be buried, they somehow rose again. With one of the most disheartening defeats in American basketball history looming over them, they somehow managed to avoid the guillotine.
After an almost unattainable 95-91 victory over Serbia, the US team will play France for the gold medal on Saturday. Nothing should be taken for granted. Not now and probably not for the rest of our lives.
“Serbia was great today and I’m really honored to have been a part of this game,” said Steve Kerr, coach of the US team. “It’s one of the greatest basketball games I’ve ever been a part of.”
It was great because Serbia was great. It was great because the eternal superstars of the US team were great exactly when they needed to be. But it was also great because it was no accident: This is what the Olympic tournament is going to be like now. The day they’ve been warning us about for over 20 years is finally here.
➤ Get Olympic updates in your texts! Join the USA TODAY Sports WhatsApp channel
MORE: The “whirlwind year” continues as Jayson Tatum chases Olympic gold
MORE: USA Basketball’s Steve Kerr and his assistants enjoy a master class in coaching
America’s edge in international basketball is now smaller than Kevin Durant’s and less permanent than Joel Embiid’s. Team USA will always have the largest pool of talent, the greatest diversity of skills and the greatest cornucopia of athletic ability from which to assemble a roster every four years.
But the gap at the top, which plays out in a shortened game according to FIBA rules? That has almost disappeared. And we should all get used to that idea.
“The other countries all have great players now,” Kerr said. “But we have the best players and we are confident that in 40 minutes it will work itself out. But yes, most of the time it was risky.”
Really tricky.
For more than three quarters of the game, Serbia was the better team. We can’t be mistaken about that. And when you consider what it cost to avoid humiliation this time, you have to ask yourself how long they can keep it up.
In the end, it came down to the aging generation of America’s greatest players of all time, all of whom are now past 30: Durant, Steph Curry, Embiid and, most of all, LeBron James. Everyone else in this game was more or less irrelevant when it came to making Nikola Jokic work a little harder, when they had to rush a shot from Bogdan Bogdanovic when the spacing was so close that instinct beyond the basketball had to come into play.
Through sheer force of will and focus, they have protected USA Basketball from questions and blame for four years. They will probably win another gold medal. They won’t be around forever.
“I mean, it’s right up there,” James said. “I’m 39 years old and going into my 22nd season. I don’t know how many more opportunities and moments like this I’m going to get to compete for something, compete for something big and play big games. Tonight was a big game.”
It was only important because the contest was so worthy. Of course, there was always a chance the U.S. could overcome a deficit that was as large as 17 points in the first half and as large as 13 in the fourth quarter. But Kerr had to put the game in the hands of a few players. Every decision mattered and every possession was on a knife edge.
Now the trends are clear. This is no longer 2004, when the U.S. sent a dysfunctional team that was bad the entire tournament and had to settle for bronze. This is no longer 2008, 2012 or 2016, when Spain was the only country in the world that could play at the U.S. level at the Olympics, and even then the U.S. never felt like it was in real danger of losing.
In 2021, however, the U.S. trailed Australia at halftime in the semifinals and had to rely on a brilliant performance from Durant in the gold medal game against France, a team they had lost to in the preliminary round.
That was a paradigm shift.
Currently, three of the NBA’s top five players play for Serbia (Jokic), Greece (Giannis Antetokounmpo) and Slovenia (Luka Doncic). The U.S. will face France again on Saturday and Victor Wembanyama will soon join that group. In four years, the French team will also have this year’s first-round pick Zaccharie Risacher, second-round pick Alex Sarr and a likely top-five pick next year in point guard Nolan Traore. They’re coming. So is Canada and possibly Germany. Serbia is staying. Australia is just a step or two away.
At the moment, the Americans are relying heavily – actually too heavily – on an old team because they are the only players that Kerr can trust to do their job.
The dirty little secret of US basketball is that it has not done a very good job of integrating young stars into its program and preparing them for this level of international competition. Anthony Edwards did more harm than good against Serbia. Jayson Tatum just won an NBA championship but didn’t take off his warm-ups against Serbia – his second failure of the tournament.
When the United States sent a team to the FIFA World Cup a year ago that was led by young players like Edwards, Jaren Jackson, Tyrese Haliburton and Paolo Banchero, the result was a disaster, losing three of their eight games.
Of course they will improve. More young stars will come in. But Team USA has long relied on Durant and James to pull them out of the fire. Soon they will have to pass the torch to a generation that hasn’t had as much responsibility or pressure, and they will do so against the backdrop of a world where the gap is clearly being closed.
Even in an away game, the United States should beat France and take home its fifth consecutive gold medal. But after watching Serbia come so close to ending our country’s dominance, that confidence is a luxury we won’t have for much longer.
Follow columnist Dan Wolken on social media @DanWolken
➤ Get to the heart of the news quickly with the USA TODAY app. Download award-winning reporting, crossword puzzles, audio storytelling, eNewspapers and more.
