By Eurohoops Team/ info@eurohoops.net
Team USA will get right back in action. Many expected the game versus Serbia to be held in another stage of the 2019 FIBA World Cup, but the two initial favorites for gold at China will meet on Thursday at Dongguan for the 5th to 8th place classification round just one day after USA suffered defeat to France at the same city of China.
On its part, USA secured a spot in the 2020 Olympic Games, but Gregg Popovich avoided building on a potential redemption team for Tokyo. “Well, they’ll be another team for sure. By that I mean we qualified for the Olympics, so they’ll be a team” simplified Gregg Popovich.
On the other hand, Serbia will try to make its way to Japan through the Olympic qualifiers, but first of all collide with USA and afterwards battle for 5th or 7th place. “Well, it’s another game,” Popovich noted on facing the Serbians. “Both teams will compete and try to win, so there’s not much else to say about that. It’s the next game.”
“Any loss hurts, and this situation hurts more, but life goes on,” added the 70-year-old head coach touching on the affect of the elimination from the semifinals. “This is very important. We would have loved to have won, just like any other team, we would have loved to win games in this tournament. But, we all have family and lives and life moving on.”
“We have another opportunity”
“On both sides of the ball we just weren’t as connected as we’ve been throughout this tournament” Harrison Barnes took out of the loss to France. “Everyone knew what was at stake. Everyone knew the opportunity that we had to represent our country. You have to take ownership of it.” He added: “We have another opportunity at least to continue to go out there and play and represent our country well tomorrow.”
“He had a good game. He played physical. He was aggressive and played well for them tonight” mentioned Jaylen Brown on Rudy Gobert. “France just played better than us tonight. That’s why we lost.”
“They outplayed us”
France deserved the semifinal berth, Joe Harris concurs. “It’s all sort of sinking in right now,” admitted the 28-year-old swingman, “I think, obviously, a lot of the credit has to be given to France. This game they outplayed us from the get-go, really.”
“You put in a lot of time, a lot of work, you build up a special bond with these guys and the coaches, and then for it not to come to fruition and the end of all of it, it’s a tough pill to swallow,” he confessed. “But at the end of the day, you still have to represent yourself and USA Basketball with class. We still have one more game tomorrow, and now we’re going to flip the switch and prepare for Serbia and try to finish this thing on the right note.”
“I can care less about the 29 points”
“I’m looking at the times there were guys open that I missed” looked back leading scorer Donovan Mitchell. “There were possessions on defense where I threw the ball in the backcourt when we were down six. I can care less about the 29 points. To me what sticks out is the things I did wrong. That’s what’s on everybody’s mind. Anybody could have had a good game. Whether is 29, 9, or 0, we lost.”
“They had a great tournament, obviously,” he went on discussing the Serbians. “They lost, but we’ve got to be ready to be locked in. Obviously, it’s tough after a loss like this, but, you know, it’s similar to the playoffs. We’ve got to be ready to play. That’s all it is. We’ve got to be ready to play. We can’t just sit here and say, well that’s it.”
“You got to live with it”
Marcus Smart will not compete in the two remaining games, but finished off his World Cup run with 11 points against the French. “We made a lot of crucial mistakes, and we played around in the first half, and it came back to bite us” he pointed out. “This is part of the game. You got to live with it.”
“It was a great experience. It was fun,” Kemba Walker said on the tournament before underlining that it is not over, “We’ve still got to play. We still play tomorrow, but we had a blast. You know, we sacrificed our summers to come here. We wanted to be here. Obviously, we wish we could have won, but we didn’t. And all you can do is credit that French team.”
Photo Credit: FIBA.BASKETBALL