The United States men’s basketball team’s tune-up for this summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo could be going a little better. While the team picked up a win in its most recent exhibition, a 28-point drubbing of Argentina, things got off to a rocky start with losses to Nigeria and Australia.
While both national teams are impressive — Nigeria is an ascending team with NBA talent and a former NBA head coach in Mike Brown, while Australia has legitimate aspirations of medaling at the Olympics — the bar is set so high for the Americans that it was shocking to see them lose back-to-back games to just about anyone. In the eyes of the team’s best player, though, there is no need for alarm.
Kevin Durant spoke to Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports and made clear that he believes the team simply got caught by two teams that are farther down the road than them.
“We’re a team that’s still coming together and trying to find our identity,” Durant said. “We have so many great players that you can play so many different ways, and we are indecisive at times on defense and offense. In the midst of us figuring it out, these teams are established and they’re running their sets. We’re working on our sets. The stars were kind of aligned for us to lose early on.”
Durant then went a little deeper, explaining the handful of ways that this sort of thing was possible.
“It’s easy to say that after two losses without any context,” Durant said. “Let’s just go down the roster of each team and you can find the answer. If you’re looking for NBA talent, those teams have it. Understand where we’re at as a team and then you can make assumptions for yourself. We do have all the best players in the league, but these national teams have NBA players, too, who are now No. 1 options and they’re used to playing that role internationally. We’re still adjusting as a team, and that’s not making excuses. There’s a lot of context people need to understand. We didn’t expect to lose a game, but losing games happen. We’ll get it right.”
The United States’ next game will come on Friday evening when they attempt to exact a measure of revenge against the Australians.