Following a narrow 92-88 victory over Germany in the final pre-Olympics tune-up, the second nailbiter in as many games, Team USA men's basketball coach Steve Kerr had to step to the podium and address the elephant in the room. These five tune-up games have cast at least a little bit of doubt on how dominant the prohibitive favorites to win gold in Paris could be.
“We can get a lot better,” Steve Kerr said following the win, per ESPN's Brian Windhorst. “We're getting to a place now where we're getting comfortable with rotations, and I think guys are getting familiar with each other. … I think we can tighten up our game and get better. And that's the plan here in the next couple of weeks.”
So that's the plan moving forward for Team USA. But what about Germany?
On Monday afternoon, the Germans weathered an early storm and then played about as well as they could in the second and third quarters, outscoring their American counterparts 52-39 in those two frames. As the game entered the fourth quarter, Team USA was on the ropes once again, and once again, it was their elder statesman who came to the rescue.
Just hours after being named the Team USA flag bearer during the Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony, LeBron James scored 11 points in the fourth quarter on a perfect 4-for-4 shooting with every bucket coming down the stretch, stealing away any and all momentum that the Germans had and sealing the win for Team USA.
After the game, Germany coach Gordon Herbert addressed the loss, noting that he was pleased with the way his team had played before acknowledging that the game's greatest player proved to be a little too difficult to stop late in the contest.
“We played with good tempo and then, yeah,” Germany coach Gordon Herbert said, “somebody named LeBron James made some plays at the end.”
Twenty-one years in, and LeBron James is still taking over at the end of close games. It's a beautiful thing.
Will Team USA capture Gold in the 2024 Summer Olympics?
Despite what we've seen from Team USA in their five pre-Olympic tune-up games, it's still reasonable to believe that when the Olympic Games come to a close in 2½ weeks' time, it will be the Americans who take the podium to have gold medals draped around their necks.
But with that said, each year that goes by, it becomes more abundantly clear that the rest of the world is catching up with Team USA.
On their way to gold this summer, there are no shortage of teams who could potentially trip Team USA up. Shoot, a South Sudan team that entered their game against Team USA as somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-point underdogs gave the heavy favorites everything they could handle.
What happens if Team USA finds themselves in a similar predicament during the Summer Olympics against much more talented teams, like Canada, Greece, Serbia or host nation France?
Well, if they do find themselves in that predicament, I imagine the story will remain the same. As he has so many times over the course of his two-decade-long NBA career, LeBron James will come to the rescue.
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