The USA Basketball men’s team could not have been expected to humiliate Serbia for the third time in a month, not with a player as great as Nikola Jokic at the center of their attack.
It did not need to be this close, though.
It should not have been this close.
Head coach Steve Kerr made almost no adjustments to the United States defense as they fell into a deficit that grew as large as 17 points and stood at 13 in the fourth quarter of this Olympic Games semifinal. When the fourth quarter began, he finally chose to keep Kevin Durant on the floor with consistent starters LeBron James, Steph Curry and Devin Booker, and that decision (along with some mental mistakes from Serbia) enabled the U.S. to recover and secure a spot in the gold medal game with a 95-91 decision.
No, a triumph. It took a lot of guts to pull out such a result.
They’re where they needed to be, but it involved far more tension than necessary.
Now they’ll play France in a home game for the opposition in Saturday’s final. The U.S. has played for the championship in every Olympics they’ve entered but two: 1988 and 2004.
The U.S. will need to play much better to grab the gold.
Onto the player ratings.
MORE: Three takeaways from USA's dramatic win over Serbia
Starters
LeBron James (power forward): 8
Yes, he contributed a triple-double (16 points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists) and was at his biggest in the most important moments.
Early in the game, though, when the U.S. should have been more reliant on him to run the offense, they got caught up in trying to shoot their way back into the game. (LeBron was only slightly guilty of this himself, as he made 2-of-4 from deep).
There is a sense that he will not allow this U.S. team to lose. He took over late against South Sudan in the pre-Olympic exhibition series and scored with 8 seconds left to secure a one-point victory. He scored the final 11 points to assure victory over Germany in the last exhibition.
Much more important, he scored six points and passed for four assists in the final quarter of this one.
Devin Booker (small forward): 7
Of all the options available to Kerr to play on the wing opposite Durant in the fourth quarter, he chose Booker. At that point, Booker had two clearly defined tasks: defend his man as effectively as possible and make an open shot if it’s absolutely necessary.
Booker was excellent throughout the comeback, even if his contributions were subtle. Aside from five points from Bogdan Bogdanovic, Serbia got nothing from its perimeter game in the fourth period. They scored only 15 points total, and bigs accounted for 10 of them.
When Nikola Jokic made the mistake of plowing through Anthony Davis’ screen as Kevin Durant nailed a 3-pointer to cut the deficit to 78-70 with 7:19 left, that gifted the Americans with an extra possession. And Booker made Serbia pay doubly by nailing an open 3-pointer off James’ inbound pass to narrow the lead to five points.
When Steph Curry executed a late steal and chose to attack the rim for a layup that made it a five-point U.S. lead, Booker made sure he screened Serbia’s Vasilije Micic to give Curry a clear path to the basket.
Joel Embiid (center): 7.5
Did the U.S. win the game because of Embiid or almost lose it because of him?
Well, yes.
Embiid’s indifferent approach to perimeter defense contributed greatly to Serbia’s 54-point first half and 56 percent 3-point shooting. So many times he did not bother with closeouts when Jokic hung up Jrue Holiday or Steph Curry on a high ball screen. And in the fourth quarter, when the Americans were trying to rally, he missed three straight blockouts that led to two opposition baskets. He wound up with only 4 rebounds in 26 minutes.
However, he bodied up for nearly all of that time against the best player in the world and was part of limiting Jokic to 7-of-17 shooting, including an 0-of-6 effort on 3-pointers that was at least partly the product of exhaustion. And Embiid scored 19 point on 8-of-11 shooting, only a few of those point-blank opportunities. He nailed two 3-pointers early. Under the most excruciating pressure, he sealed big Nikola Milutinov, caught LeBron James’ over-the-top feed and converted as he was fouled. The three-point play make cut Serbia’s lead to 84-80. His fallaway jumper made it a 2-point game. And then he surged to cut off a drive by Ognjen Dobric and blocked the shot.
He showed he can play defense if he wants. Why not start earlier and save his adopted country all that agony?
Steph Curry (point guard): 10
Curry’s rating is only because the scale does not run to 36. Perfect is perfect. And even though he wasn’t perfect – there were a couple of turnovers, and one or two poorly timed shots – he was perfect.
It could be argued the U.S. would have been run out of the gym if not for Curry’s early barrage of 3-pointers (17 points in the first quarter, another three before halftime). It also could be argued they might have run some offense and worn down the D a bit if they weren’t just relying on Steph to throw it in from long distance.
After the Americans had scrambled back from a 13-point deficit at the start of the final period to tie the game on LeBron James’ determined layup, and after they immediately surrendered that lead when Jokic passed for one of his 10 assists to Filip Petrusev, Curry stepped forward and nailed a 3-pointer with 2:24 left to give the U.S. their first lead since early in the first quarter.
And after another score by James made it a 3-point game, Curry stole a misguided pass from the left post toward the right wing by Bogdan Bogdanovic and took the ball coast-to-coast for a layup and a five-point lead.
As a friend in the media told me afterward: “Steph wants a gold so badly.”
MORE: How Steph Curry, LeBron James rescued Team USA
Jrue Holiday (shooting guard): 4.5
Holiday is in the starting lineup for his defense, first, and he did a poor job dealing with the screens set by Jokic throughout the first three quarters. He bore a lot of the responsibility for Serbia’s first-half 3-point excellence, although not as much as Embiid.
Holiday did get credit for assists on a number of 3-point baskets by the United States and had seven for the game, and he made a nice 3-pointer in the third quarter that cut the lead to a half-dozen points and should have meant more.
Substitutes
Kevin Durant (small forward): 8.5
He has scored 28,924 career points and soon will extend the list of players who’ve reached the 30,000 mark to nine. He has been named an All-Star 14 times and All-NBA 11 times, earned two NBA titles and an MVP award. He’s not once been All-Defense.
Until today.
The one great strategic move Kerr made in this game was to have Durant start the fourth quarter on Serbia point guard Micic, and later switch to Bogdanovic. Together they scored 5 points in the final period, and Bogdanovic got three of those when he was switched onto Embiid and attacked the lane. Durant’s defense was not the only factor in the disruption of a Serbia three-point attack that started 15-of-30 and finished 15-of-39.
It was the most important, though.
Bam Adebayo (power forward): 5
The U.S. coaches had hoped Adebayo could contribute physicality against Jokic to limit Anthony Davis’ exposure to that matchup, and to cope with the foul trouble Davis encountered. Adebayo played one of his poorest games for USA Basketball, going scoreless with just a single rebound in 9 minutes of playing time.
Anthony Davis (center): 5
If someone wanted to play basketball like a linebacker, the officials in this game were going to allow it. If they wanted to play gracefully, the refs hadn’t much time for it. So it was not a great game for Davis.
He executed a beautiful tip-in of a missed jumper from Durant to cut the U.S. deficit to 67-61 in the third quarter, but his three fouls in just 10 minutes kept him from mattering.
Anthony Edwards (shooting guard): 3
At a time in the first half when Edwards might have been able to use his dynamism to stop Serbia’s momentum, he committed two turnovers and left open a corner 3-point shooter that Jokic was sure to find.
He shot only 1-of-3 from the field and missed both of his long-range attempts.
Derrick White (point guard): 1
Another player in the game for his defense, White did almost as much damage to the U.S. cause in his 7 minutes of playing time as Bogdanovic did while scoring 20 points.
White struggled to guard Micic through a screen and allowed him to bank in a 3-pointer to put Serbia ahead by double figures for the first time, 37-25. White responded to that by missing a 3-pointer he should not have taken.
He got buried on another screen in the third quarter, and this time Micic struck from deep for a 70-61 Serbia lead. And just to make sure we knew he’d been there, White fouled Marko Guduric on a successful 3-point attempt with 32 seconds left in the third quarter. That 4-point play put Serbia ahead, 71-61.
At that point, the United States had a ton of ground to cover and not much time to get there.
White didn’t play in the final 12 minutes, which probably helped.