The gap between international and American basketball might be closing, but the gap between Kevin Durant and every other scorer, if not player, in the world right now is as big as ever.
Throwing that whole “let the game come to you” adage out the window, he started cooking when Team USA couldn’t find a bucket elsewhere.
“We tried to make him work as hard as we can, but he’s Kevin Durant,” France center Rudy Gobert said.
players with three Olympic gold medals, has scored 30, 30 and 29 points in those three gold-medal games.
This is not a feat you see often, an NBA title and gold medal in the same year, and Holiday, for my money, was the second-most valuable player over the course of both runs.
He sets a tone, creates downhill leverage, and does not hesitate to fire 3s even when they’re not falling, which keeps the USA’s offense moving on schedule.
player to go over 30 minutes, which tells you how indispensable Holiday was for a team littered with star power.
At times, he could hardly keep from being forced back over the half-court line as Holiday bodied him 45 feet from the basket.
Gobert, who would love to be as prioritized in the Utah Jazz’s offense as he is for the French national team, finished with 16 points on a perfect 5-for-5 shooting.
He was arguably the second-most valuable player in this game, third at worst if you want to say Holiday behind Durant, but that doesn’t change the fact that Gobert had a legit chance to lead France to a gold medal had he been able to have a great night at the free-throw line.
In most ways, it felt like France was lucky to be in this game, down just five at halftime and eight heading into the fourth quarter after the U.S.
It was telling when Durant, who was feeling it and clearly was in takeover mode from the start, deferred to Tatum more than once when a mismatch presented itself, and Tatum attacked without hesitation.
Bam Adebayo and Draymond Green were terrific defensively and both made sweet deliveries off the short roll for layups and dunks — Green finding Zach LaVine and Adebayo hitting Durant with a backdoor bounce pass for an and-1 flush.
Damian Lillard, who struggled pretty much the entire time in Tokyo, finally found some rhythm late and hit a couple of big buckets to make his line look a little better .
Certainly, Lillard would’ve liked to play better, but ultimately this was about getting a gold medal, which was no sure thing.