If living up to the adage: “If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all” was an Olympic event, the US men’s basketball team would have been standing atop the Rio de Janeiro Games podium on Thursday.
Plenty of platitudes and praise were being handed out, but no medals: Those will be awarded on the final day of the Rio Olympics on Aug. 21, when US players are expected, as they have at 14 of 17 Summer Games, to bring home gold.
While this US squad is more “B Team” than “Dream Team” — with many top players, including four-time National Basketball Association MVP LeBron James and twice reigning MVP Stephen Curry, opting out — they remain the heavy favorites.
Photo: AP
If there was any thought the US might be ripe for an upset in Rio, Team USA removed a good amount of that doubt with a dominating run-in to the Games that saw them thrash China, their opening-night opponents, by 50 and 49 points in tune-up games.
Asked what he expected from China today, Kevin Durant, the 2014 NBA MVP, searched for a moment for something positive to say before settling on the well-worn, but trusty cliche: “They made us work.”
“They played their tails off against us and made us better,” offered Durant in the sincerest tone he could muster.
“We won by a lot of points, but they made us better,” he said.
“I know it is going to be different here,” Durant said. “This is the real thing, these guys want to beat us, everybody wants to beat us and we don’t to be that team to have someone beat us.”
Despite Durant’s best attempts to inject some suspense into today’s contest, the truth is that the outcome is unlikely to be any different.
Losses have been rare on Olympic hardwood for the US, who boast an all-time record of 130-5 in Games competition and will be expected to add to that win column as they chase a third straight gold.
However, at a packed news conference on Thursday, Team USA players and coaching staff did their best to convince hundreds of media that danger lurked everywhere up and down the draw.
“We want to win, we want to send a message to the rest of the world we are here on business,” said Carmelo Anthony, a four-time Olympian in basketball. “We are focused on winning and that’s what we care about.”
“We don’t want to let anything come in between that,” he said.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later