Team USA put forth an impressive showing in the men’s basketball group stage of the Olympics, cruising to wins against Serbia, South Sudan, and Puerto Rico to earn the top seed in the knockout rounds.
Because of that top seeding, they faced Brazil in the quarterfinals and were massive favorites to win. While they’ve had slow starts throughout the Olympics, it didn’t take long for the Americans to assert their dominance on Tuesday night in Paris, as they jumped out to an early lead and never looked back. Devin Booker and Joel Embiid led the charge early, with Booker knocking down a three while getting fouled to push the lead out to double digits in the first quarter.
From there, they really stretched their lead out in the second quarter, finishing with an exclamation point as LeBron James found Jayson Tatum for an alley-oop off an inbound that gave them a 27-point lead going into halftime.
The second half was much of the same, as Team USA cruised to a 122-87 win, as they simply asserted their will on Brazil, who had no way to match up with the physicality and athleticism of Team USA — with Anthony Davis’ massive putback dunk in the third quarter a friendly reminder of that difference.
Booker finished as Team USA’s leading scorer with 18 points, but six players reached double figures and two more (Jrue Holiday and Bam Adebayo) hit nine points in the best offensive outing from the Americans in the Olympics. Anthony Edwards had 17 points off the bench, Embiid scored 14 with seven rebounds, Davis added 13 and 8 boards, James had 12 points and nine assists, and Kevin Durant chipped in 11 off the bench.
Bruno Caboclo did his best, scoring an impressive 30 points on 13-of-20 shooting, to give Brazil a boost, but they just didn’t have the firepower to keep up with Team USA.
Now the Americans will face Serbia for the second time this Olympics (and third time this summer), where they’ll try to once again dispatch Nikola Jokic, Bogdan Bogdanovic, and the rest of the talented Serbian squad that beat Australia on Tuesday.
