“Maybe more than any player I’ve ever been around, when he comes back from a long absence, you don’t notice it,” Team USA head coach Steve Kerr said after the game. “I mean, he’s so skilled, and he just looked like he was in mid-season form after not playing in a real basketball game for a couple of months. Pretty incredible.”
Durant sat out Team USA’s entire Olympic exhibition run, and now it doesn’t look so much like a coincidence that they happened to struggle mightily over those five games. His appearance late in the first quarter was a timely one, helping settle a U.S. team that initially struggled to contain the whirling Serbian attack led by three-time and defending NBA MVP
“He’s an impossible cover,” Kerr said. “The strength of our team is our depth, and we’re going to — we’ve got three guys who can guard him. And that was the approach, just rotate guys onto him and cross your fingers because he’s a brilliant player.”
For a team full of its own MVPs and NBA champions, the United States looked awfully rattled early in the first quarter of its first Olympic game. Kerr ran out a starting lineup ond that esteemed crew almost immediately got itself into trouble.
- full swing, and Team USA is making a big splash in the swimming events. The s certainly star-studded, with Caeleb Dressel, Bobby Finke, Chase Kalisz and Ryan Murphy competing for the U.S. on the men’s side. On the women’s side, we’ve got Katie Ledecky, Lilly King, Regan Smith, Simone Manuel and the Walsh sisters. So fahe 100m Butterfly, alongside Jack Alexj, Chris Guiliano, Hunter Armstrong, Caeleb Dressel — who won for the men’s 4 x 100m Freestyle race. Nic Fink won silver for the 100m Breaststroke, Gretchen Walsh won silver for for 100m Butterfly, Huske, Walsh, Kate Douglass and Simone Manuel earned silver in the 4 x 100 Freestyle race, and Carson Foster and Katie Ledecky both earned bronze (in the 400m IM and Freestyle, respectively).
The competition continues this week. Are you watching Olympic Swimming? Here’s what you need to know about tuning in, including the full Team USA Swimming roster, the