Anthony Davis knows that Team USA won’t have an easy road to a gold medal at the Paris Olympics.
The Los Angeles Lakers star addressed the team’s shortcomings in exhibition games and said they will need to clean things up as they begin to play games that count this weekend.
“When that first game starts, it’s time to go and it counts for real,” Davis said (20-second mark). “Our mistakes that we made have been corrected, talked about, watched in film. So now, we have to play almost perfect basketball, mistake-free basketball if we want to win a gold medal.”
With the way the NBA has grown and become a global league this century, the rest of the world has caught up to the once-dominant United States squad. A record 66 current and former NBA players will be competing for teams other than Team USA in this year’s Olympics, meaning the United States will be going up against an NBA player in just about every one of its matchups.
Team USA’s first matchup will set the tone for the Olympics. The United States will face a Nikola Jokić-led Serbian team on Sunday to begin action.
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While the rest of the world has plenty of talent, Team USA boasts a stacked roster, highlighted by veterans like LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant along with young stars like Anthony Edwards, Tyrese Haliburton and Jayson Tatum.
Team USA looked shaky in the weeks leading up to the Olympics, but if it can correct its mistakes it should be able to win another gold.
