PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Tokyo Olympics are fast approaching, and the U.S. men’s basketball team isn’t performing like the powerhouse some expect it to be.
On Saturday, Team USA lost to Nigeria 90-87 in an exhibition game. On Monday, they fell to Australia 91-83 in Las Vegas.
After the loss to Australia, San Antonio Spurs and USA men’s basketball head coach Gregg Popovich had to set the record straight.
After the game, a reporter asked Portland Trail Blazers superstar Damian Lillard what it was like watching Team USA in the past breeze through blowouts, compared to experiencing closer and tougher results now. Popovich stepped in and called the reporter out for asking a similar question “last time, where you assume things that are not true.”
“When you just mentioned blowing these teams out, that’s never happened,” he said, “so I don’t know where you get that.”
The reporter’s response was inaudible, though Popovich interrupted multiple times, “Can I finish?”
“Are you gonna let me finish my statement or not?” Popovich insisted calmly. “So you’ll be quiet now while I talk, and then I’ll listen to you.”
He continued, “When you make statements about in the past just blowing out these other teams, No. 1, you give no respect to the other teams, and I talked to you last time about the same thing. We’ve had very close games against four or five countries in all these tournaments, so the good teams do not get blown out. There are certain games that might happen in one of the tournaments — in World Champions or the Olympics — where somebody gets blown out, but in general, nobody’s blowing anybody out for the good teams. So when you make a statement like that, it’s like you assume that’s what’s going on, and that’s incorrect.”
Ahead of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, U.S. men’s basketball cruised in its five exhibition matchups. Then during Olympic play, the team beat China 119-62, Venezuela 113-69, Australia 98-88, Serbia 94-91 and France 100-97. In the knockout rounds, the U.S. defeated Argentina 105-78, Spain 82-76 and Serbia — who had only lost to Team USA by three points in the preliminary matchup — 96-66 in the Gold Medal Game.
But since the 2019 World Cup, U.S. men’s basketball has not had much success.
Team USA has three more exhibitions before heading to Tokyo.