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After losing to Nigeria and Australia, Team USA took a beating in the media. This link goes into some of the stupider things that were said.
We’ll see how things ultimately turn out, but it’s good to remember that, once again, Covid has changed things and compressed the schedule, with the current roster having less than a week together, and three members still not available since the NBA Finals are still going on.
In 2016, for instance, Kyrie Irving hit that thrilling clutch shot to take out the Golden State Warriors on June 16th. The Olympics started on August 5th.
That’s a huge difference.
Anyway, our guys had a better outing Tuesday night, beating Argentina 108-80. Gregg Popovich said the energy was better and the US rushed out to a 28-12 lead and didn’t wear down at the end as happened in both previous games.
We’re still not happy with the rebounding but it was definitely better, with the US winning that battle 40-34.
The team shot 44.8 percent on threes and 51.4 percent overall compared to 31.4 and 38.4 percent for the Argentines.
There’s a lot to do on a very compressed schedule so our best bet is to give them the room to make mistakes and get better. For our part, we’ll try harder to do that.