France shocks Team USA in men’s basketball group play, winning 83-76 and snapping 25-game win streak.
USA entered the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as a favorite to win a fourth consecutive Olympic gold medal, but will now have to rebound from an opening loss, their first at the Games since 2004.
It’s uphill from here for the Team USA men’s basketball team.
It’s the first loss for the U.S. men at the Olympics since Athens 2004 – snapping a streak of 25 consecutive wins.
The French trailed by eight points at halftime, but rallied to lead by six ahead of the fourth period and then held off an American surge to seal the win.
Evan Fournier led France with 28 points, while Jrue Holiday scored 18 for Team USA.
U.S. star Kevin Durant sat out for much of the third quarter with four fouls, France outscoring the U.S. 25-11 in that stanza. Durant scored 10 points in 20 minutes played for the game.
Team USA, loaded with offensive talent and built to be the best shooting team in the tournament, didn’t make a basket for the last four-and-a-half minutes. Over and over they got open looks and over and over they missed them. The team has various chemistry and timing challenges but horrid execution cost them badly in this one.
It is the second time in the last three years France has beaten Team USA, including the 2019 World Cup in China, which was a lesser American team.
Coach Gregg Popovich, who said he’d been thinking about this rematch for years and certainly daily since the game was drawn in February, never discovered how to slow down Fournier as he repeatedly got free for open looks on the perimeter.
French coach Vincent Collet also outmaneuvered Popovich by deploying a super big lineup in the second half by playing 7-footers Rudy Gobert and Vincent Poirier together, zippering shut the American offense.
Holiday, who flew 6,000 miles and arrived at 1 a.m. on game day, scored 12 points in the fourth quarter to help the U.S. get in position to win.
But the Americans’ main offensive weapons melted down the stretch. Durant played the worst game of his storied Olympic career, getting in foul trouble and shooting just 4-of-12. Damian Lillard was 3-of-10 and was so out of sorts that Popovich took him out of the game late in the fourth quarter.
The teams next play on Monday, with the U.S. facing Iran and France taking on Czech Republic.
