Posted on 09/11/2019 10:04:21 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Team USA saw its 58-game winning streak in international tournaments featuring NBA players end Wednesday with an 89-79 loss to France in the quarterfinals of the FIBA World Cup in Dongguan, China, ensuring USA Basketball cannot medal.
Team USA’s last loss with NBA players on its roster came against Greece in the semifinals of the 2006 world championships. The Americans rebounded to win gold at the Beijing Olympics two years later and also won the two Olympic tournaments that followed. They already had qualified for next year’s Summer Games in Tokyo.
The composition of Team USA’s roster at those Olympics remains to be seen. Virtually all of the NBA’s top American stars elected to skip the World Cup, which FIBA moved to an odd year for the first time since the 1960s. Former NBA Commissioner David Stern called that move “a mistake.”
“As a result, you are asking players to play in the FIBA world championship, play in the season and then play in the Olympics,” he told the Undefeated’s Marc J. Spears in an interview published Tuesday. “And I think that pushed a lot of players to feel that they should make a choice between back-to-back years of international competition. And that’s it.”
Donovan Mitchell scored 29 points for the United States against France, but all of them came in the first three quarters. In the fourth, Team USA squandered a seven-point lead and went scoreless over six consecutive possessions at one point.
Both teams gave up leads in the second half. France led by 10 early in the third quarter but the Americans countered with a 31-14 run over the next 10 minutes to take a five-point lead.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I guess our African-American basketball team didn’t do as well as the Franco-African basketball team.
I was rooting for Poland, but they got ousted by Spain yesterday.
Thanks, interesting.
I really give zero sh*ts about any team USA sports outside of Ice Hockey.
They mostly lost because the best players didn’t play. Next year is an Olympic year, so biggest stars didn’t want to play in FIBA World Championships, then a NBA season, then the Olympics.
But I’m glad they lost. Every now and then the arrogant NBA black players need to be reminded other countries have tall people too, who can shoot.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.