Team USA is starting to feel the heat of the tournament. After successive blowouts in wins over China and Venezuela, the Americans found themselves in dogfights in wins over Australia and Serbia.
They nearly suffered a huge upset loss against Serbia with a close 94-91 victory—the second straight game that the US failed to score at least 100 points.
Nevertheless, the US still boasts of a roster brimming with offensive talent, which should give France a ton of headaches this Sunday. But as Paul George said in an interview following the contest, they should be playing less individual ball and more as a team on the floor. The US tops the tournament with 106.0 points per game while shooting 47.9 percent from the field.
Kevin Durant, who scored 12 points in the Serbia game, leads the US with 16.5 PPG.
Having seen Australia and Serbia push the Americans near the edge, France will come in to this Sunday’s showdown with USA confident of its chances to score an upset win.
As of this writing, France has yet to play Venezuela but the result of that game should be a foregone conclusion in favor of the Europeans. Team France doesn’t have a shortage of star power in the tournament with five active NBA players in its lineup. They are (Tony Parker, Nicolas Batum, Rudy Gobert, Boris Diaw and Joffrey Lauvergne. Plus France has the pair of Nando de Colo and Mickael Gelabale, who have past experiences playing in the NBA.
Surprisingly, Diaw has emerged as France’s best player in the tournament with the burly forward averaging 9.0 PPG, 6.0 RPG and 5.3 APG. Rudy Gobert, meanwhile, is a force to reckon with inside the paint on both ends of the floor, putting up 6.0 PPG, 7.0 RPG and 3.3 BPG.
