// Team USA will face Spain on Sunday in a rematch of the 2008 Beijing final. The Americans survived Pau Gasol’s 21 points to win a 118-107 classic and recapture the gold medal they were unworthy of in Athens four years earlier. There was no way to tell by watching that fiercely contested final that only a week earlier, the United States had beaten the same Spanish team by 37. And when it comes to Olympic basketball, that’s just it. Given the
The French went down flagrantly, with a nut shot from Ronny Turiaf on Rudy Fernandez and a felonious foul by Nicolas Batum against Juan Carlos Navarro. France missed 11 consecutive shots before getting a meaningless one with 9 seconds left, and a new chapter of crunch time failure was added to Les Blues’ history book in a 66-59 quarterfinal loss at the Olympics in London. Batum committed an intentional foul that was so flagrant, a hard, long-armed swipe that knocked Navarro to
We’ve had a very positive preparation for the Olympics! Tomorrow we start competing! Let’s see if you like this video!youtube.com/watch?v=j1Q0H6… — Pau Gasol (@paugasol) July 28, 2012 The self-proclaimed “beast” of the London Olympics shared this 5-minute lovefest video with the world, and make no mistake — Spain is going into these Olympics supremely confident. However … Pau’s brother Marc has a bruised shoulder that kept him out of the final friendly against Team USA. Juan Carlos Navarro, the team’s best guard, has plantar
I am going to give you a Team USA gold-or-not prediction in this column, and I promise you a prediction that goes against the grain. That’s all I’ll say about that … for now. First, I’ll hand over the podium and relay a quote that could be the defining declaration concerning the London Olympics: “Let’s no longer beat about the bush. This summer’s Olympics Games are going to be a catalog of disasters. Not everything that can go wrong will go wrong.
BARCELONA — Memo to Kevin Love: If you don’t knock someone on their ass tomorrow, and if you continue to play as though you have a sense of entitlement rather than a job to do, you are going to be watching Anthony Davis take your minutes as the last big man off the bench. That advice is based on solid intel, because the powers that be at USA Basketball are not happy that the Kevin Love they came to appreciate two
