Team USA men's basketball falls to France in Olympics

nypost ^

[janetjanet998]

Team USA was fried by the French in a stunning men’s basketball opening loss at the Tokyo Olympics.

The Americans led Team France by seven with under four minutes remaining, but the French scored the next 14 points for a shocking 83-76 victory at Saitama Super Arena.

Nets star Kevin Durant was in early foul trouble and finished with 10 points on 4-for-12 shooting in 21 minutes before fouling out in the closing seconds. Jrue Holiday net a team-high 18 and Bam Adebayo adding 12.

[poconopundit]

Thanks for the tip. I watched a few minutes of game 2 on YouTube and the play was indeed great. The quality of the video was rather poor though, so I’m wondering where you can find a better vid.

[poconopundit]

Well said, DoodleBob. Connective tissue is missing.. I'm from Massachusetts and grew up in the Bobby Orr era.

[mewzilla]

Speaking of the Olympics...

Inside sex-mad Olympic Village where randy athletes have hot tub orgies and romp with celebs

Ick.

[Alberta's Child]

The game of hockey has changed a lot in the last 20 years. Some of those defensive systems from the 1990s were made obsolete when they changed the rules in 2005 and eliminated the red line for off-side plays from the defensive zone. Basically, the violation for a two-line pass was eliminated from the rules, so players can now pass out of the defensive zone all the way to the opposing blue line instead of just to the center red line.

Perhaps the biggest change is that the approach to "playing defense" has been turned on its head. Now, instead of focusing on playing defensively in the neutral zone and in the defensive zone, teams look to play "defense" by maintaining possession of the puck and keeping the other team from generating offense that way. Team Canada played this system to perfection in winning the gold medal at the 2010 Olympics. Their "defensive line" was a group of offensive players who weren't known for their defensive skills but did a superb job of keeping the puck in the offensive zone for long stretches of time.

[Alberta's Child]

The best video I could find online was this one:

1987 Canada Cup Final: Game 2

I have a full DVD set of all the games Canada played in the whole tournament. The quality is OK but it's obvious that it was originally recorded in VHS format.

[poconopundit]

Thanks, I watched a good 30 minutes of this. Solid hockey where the action never stops.

As I think back to the old Boston Bruins games, the TV quality was always pretty poor anyway.

When I was in the Navy in Japan, I remember we took a bus trip to see the Russian national team play the Japanese nationals. It was quite a match. A similar match. Solid play on both sides of the ice. A real pleasure to watch.

Thanks for posting!

[Cronos]

The thing is that the rest of the world are rapidly catching up.

This is like England with football until the 1950s. Or England with cricket until the 1970s

[dfwgator]

Think also about baseball once the Japanese and the Dominicans started to take over.