Paris, Jul 26 (IANS): The 2024 Paris Olympics are a historical one when it comes to men's basketball. The Dream Team and the Redeem team are perhaps the two greatest lineups ever assembled in USA basketball and its time for the current stars to make their mark on an international stage.
Ahead of the opening ceremony on Friday, which officially marks the beginning of the Games, head coach Steve Kerr stated that it was time for his side to 'lock in.'
"(It’s) just effort and energy, play after play after play. This is different. This is not an 82-game season (like the NBA). They’re not going to play 125 games total with preseason and playoffs and all that. It’s literally six games. And watching the tape, we’re jogging through some possessions, not hitting bodies on box-outs. And so it’s time. It’s time to lock in on that. And as I said, that’s for all of us — coaches and players — to get to that point,” said head coach Kerr in a press conference.
The USA team is coming off a tremendous round of exhibition games going 6-0 in games that were played in London, Dubai and Las Vegas in which they faced two of the three members of their Group C in Serbia and South Sudan.
South Sudan were the team that almost got the better of the giants but a late winner by LeBron James saw them lose by just a point.
Former teammates for the Golden State Warriors, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant, claimed that the level of competition on the international stage has risen and that the opponents they will face are much more challenging than what the Dream Team had to face in the 1992 Olympics.
"You see that thing where they said the Dream Team played against nine NBA players, and..." Curry trailed off before Kevin Durant completed his sentence by saying, "We’re playing against 65, or 64 NBA players now. They’re all the best of the best in the world now."
Durant was referring to the increase in competition on an international level of basketball, with many European players now being top athletes in the NBA.
USA is in Group C where they will face Nikola Jokic’s Serbia, South Sudan and Puerto Rico. The basketball event begins on Saturday.