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Frenchman Rudy Gobert played in a quarterfinal match against the United States for the FIBA Basketball World Cup in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, southern China on Wednesday, September 11, 2019 France beat the United States 89-79 (Photo AP / Ng Han Guan)
By John Schuhmann, NBA.com
DONGGUAN, CHINA – With the list of players that the US men's national team has brought to China for the FIBA World Cup, there would potentially be games without the best player.
One of these potential games came to fruition in the second round, when the United States met Giannis Antetokounmpo and Greece. The Americans executed their game plan, forced Antetokounmpo out of the ball and his teammates were just not good enough to take advantage of the attention to the reigning MVP Kia.
Another of these potential games came to fruition on Wednesday, when the United States met Rudy Gobert and France in the quarterfinals. A third game of this type – the United States against Nikola Jokic and Serbia in 5th to 8th place – will also perform. That's because France dropped the reigning world champions twice with a 89-79 loss after a huge match – 21 points, 16 rebounds and three blocks – from Kia's defensive player of the year. the NBA.
"I've been dreaming for a while," Gobert said of his victory over the United States. "When I was 20 or 21 years old, I was watching [USA] games and I thought we could do it in a short period of time. Tonight, before the game, I was thinking about that. I thought we might never have the opportunity again. "
Gobert took advantage of the opportunity. He created most of the screens that released Evan Fournier for a total of 22 points. When Gobert had the ball, he took advantage of the smaller defensemen to score goals inside and get to the finish line, where he shot 9 in 10 (he is just a defender of career of 63% in NBA).
With Gobert on the ground, France scored 84 points out of 64 possessions (1.31 percent). With him, France scores only five out of 10 possessions.
Defensively, he was the anchor that prevented the Americans from getting to the basket and allowed his teammates to put pressure on the ball.
"If he plays well in defense," said Frenchman Nicolas Batum, "we know it will be easy for us because we knew we had the big tower behind us so we tried to be aggressive. "
Over the last 28 years, the United States has brought NBA players to international tournaments. They have never faced an adversary that has had such an impact on both sides of the ground. The United States beat France 18 to 5 in less than six minutes with Gobert on the bench. But they could not lure him into foul problems and he played well in 34:09, a game record, recording a plus-23.
One should not need more motivation in a World Cup playoff game and Gobert said he dreamed of a win over the United States for a long time. But Batum said his teammate was motivated by a few words from US center Myles Turner. After the United States defeated Brazil on Monday, Turner was questioned about the match against Gobert.
"I can not wait to be there," Turner said. "He is a good defensive player, I am a good defensive player, it will be a good game, he is the defensive player of the year."
"He saw the comments they made about it yesterday," Batum said. "Against Australia [on Monday]we had the worst defense game we could have this year. So we wanted to make a statement on defense. And when we saw that yesterday morning, we knew that Rudy was going to be ready. "
Turner scored only two points in 10 minutes of playing time. For most of the second half, the United States opted for a small ball look that had been helpful to them earlier in the game. tournament. This apparently helped them to take control of the game (with a seven-point lead) early in the fourth quarter.
But after Gobert's return after a brief rest, the United States scored only for four of its last 16 assets. He blocked Kemba Walker and Donovan Mitchell, while fighting a few more shots on the rim.
"I knew that they were going to try to do that," Gobert said about the small ball alignments, "try to get me out of the game, try to get me out of what I'm doing."
"When they played the little ball, we did not adjust," added Batum. "We kept him on the field and we knew he was going to make a difference anyway, which is why he is our best player."
If Antetokounmpo did not get the help he needed against the United States, Gobert certainly did. Fournier and Nando De Colo were great in pick-and-roll. And Frank Ntilikina hit two huge jumpers in the fourth quarter.
"It's the best French team I've seen," said US coach Gregg Popovich, "as they play both ends of the field." not just an offensive team that performs well.This is not just two or three players.
"All the pieces are adjusted, they're deep, and I think they did a great job, they were wonderful tonight."
Although the United States did not have a player that could affect the game, unlike Gobert (but Mitchell certainly tried to do it), many regretted the first American defeat in a major tournament since the half finals of the 2006 World Championship.
"Everyone knows what we wanted to do and we did not do it," said Jaylen Brown. "So I guess you can imagine how we feel."
The No. 1 ranked World Cup defense in the round of 16 was not enough.
"We could not really do it like we did [against] Joe Harris said, "It started from the start. We did not get enough pressure early enough and then we bit ourselves at the end of the match. "
There were expensive turnovers and missed free throws.
"It hurts," said Walker, who missed two freebies with a chance of making it a match in a possession with 43 seconds to go.
"I really wanted to do that for my teammates, but sometimes it's like that the ball is going in. Very, very unfortunate and it's nothing that I can control."
The Americans still have two more games to play. They will face Serbia in Dongguan on Thursday and then (according to the result on Thursday) for a fifth or seventh place in Beijing on Saturday.
Although this was a unique situation with the top three players in an international tournament played for non-US teams, the Americans did not want to know more about the players who chose not to participate.
"They do not want to come here, that's their problem," Mitchell said following a question asked that was asked quite frequently over the last six weeks. "We have 11 other guys in this room who want to compete, and on top of that, the guys who did not want to compete, so I'm going to ride for those guys."
"You [media] Guys will do your thing, but we have 12 guys who want to compete for America, like all other countries. It is unfortunate that some of our farmers do not feel like that, but we do not care. We wanted to compete and we did it. "
In the end, they failed in a match that will probably be remembered much longer in France than in the United States.
"It does not mean much if you do not win gold," said Gobert, "but it's still something that will remain as one of the biggest victories of my career and the biggest victory of French basketball, that's for sure. "
The United States now have two unimportant matches and France go into the semi-finals – the best remaining player in the tournament and perhaps the best chance to win it.
John Schuhmann is Senior Statistics Analyst for NBA.com. You can send him an e-mail here, find his archives here and follow him on Twitter.
The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting.
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