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DONGGUAN, China – Gregg Popovich, coach of the US Men's National Basketball Team, sneaked colorful words into greetings from his Serbian counterpart Sasha Djordjevic as they huddled on the floor Thursday morning. .
It was not a reaction of anger at what was on the front pages of the newspapers before the FIBA World Cup, Djordjevic said of a possible Serbia-USA match: "Let them play their basketball and we will play ours and if we meet, God helps them. "
Popovich was at his first personal meeting with Djordjevic ever since, using humor to hide the sadness.
Djordjevic did not want to use cursed words at his post-match press conference, but he later revealed that Popovich, the five-a-side N.B.A. winning championship coach, broke the ice pre-game jokingly calling them "a couple of losers" – with a blasphemy thrown away.
"We were looking at each other, saying," Are we playing this? "," Said Djordjevic, referring to the fifth game of the week. The Serbs won 94-89, beating the United States at the Dongguan Basketball Center to win the worst performance ever seen by Americans in a major international tournament starring N.B.A. players.
"He said we should play for something else," said Djordjevic. "The disappointment is there. The competitors are like that. "
American striker Khris Middleton, who totals 16 points in support of Harrison Barnes' team record (22), said: "I think both teams would prefer to face in a stick type. or different setting ".
Even before Djordjevic's August statement that he claimed to be a belated television attempt to win the confidence of his players, Serbia was presented as the main threat to the United States in this competition, largely because from Nikola Jokic, Denver. Nuggets All-Star.
If you had questioned FIBA experts at the World Cup, Serbia and the United States would surely have been cited as the most likely clash for Sunday's Beijing league match.
But the tournament could not have run much more atrocious for the two so-called best contenders.
Serbia followed a defensive defeat in the second round against Spain and a more expensive quarter-final defeat against Argentina, despite the fact that the Argentinian team had a draw, N.B.A. players. The series of untimely defeats prevented Jokic & Co. from competing for the medal and even denying it an automatic spot at the Olympic Games next summer, which were ranked among the top two teams in the tournament among the European teams: the France and Spain.
The United States, meanwhile, suffered a loss in the quarterfinals against France on Wednesday. They did more than just break their streak of 13 consecutive wins in 58 tournaments. The defeat took an even bigger look at the dozens of US basketball players who were not thanked and who were received by big American stars, which resulted in an often ridiculous training that took place. was disappointing, as feared.
"We thought we had enough with what we had," said Jerry Colangelo, chief executive of the United States.
These back stories gave rise to a dark scene Thursday night in a half-filled tipoff arena. Then, the Americans – forced to play two times in a tournament because they failed to qualify for the medal round – soon found themselves in a 32-7 football goal deficit. after a quarter.
The Serbs exhausted eight of their nine three-point attempts over the period to strengthen their lead by 25 points, even with Jokic playing almost casually, refusing to shoot a single shot in nearly seven minutes.
Bogdan Bogdanovic (28 points) and the Jokic cruisers (9 points, 7 assists) led by the Sacramento Kings, Serbia departed in the fourth quarter after the United States pulled back to 44-40 in mid-term. time.
The result has brought the United States to the seventh or eighth place, according to their record on Saturday afternoon against Poland. So it will go down, win or lose, like the worst result in the US – worse than his sixth place at the 2002 world championships in Indianapolis with Popovich as assistant coach.
Djordjevic and Serbian striker Vasilije Micic hinted that the United States, judging by the disparity in the first quarter, was not ready to play with emotion after the defeat of France.
"It was in their head," said Djordjevic.
Probably. There is frankly a lot to think about after the most tumultuous summer of the United States of America. Since Colangelo, 79, has been hired by David Stern, director of N.B.A. Commissioner, then, to review the program after winning the bronze medal at the 2004 Olympic Games in Greece.
The Americans lost three games in less than a month, considering their defeat at their August 24th show in Australia – and there really should have been four defeats, without the generosity of Turkey who missed a surprise auction.
U.S.A.B. Coaches and officials held a nightly meeting Wednesday at the team hotel in Dongguan to begin analyzing the problems they must tackle before the Tokyo Olympics next summer. But Popovich asked to leave the meeting early for what Colangelo called "private time".
"And I understood that," said Colangelo. "It was hard for him because he wanted to win very badly."
Rest assured that the least important concerns of the Americans at the moment are Djordjevic's one-month-old quotations, no matter how often they were picked up by American media outlets.
"I did not want to be disrespectful," Djordjevic said. "On the contrary, it was something said to encourage my guys. I work a lot on their heads and that was maybe a message that we were ready. "
The fact that Serbia does not finish higher than fifth place, having achieved the title title against the United States at the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, has forced Djordjevic to admit that, retrospectively , "We may not have been ready." But he described Thursday's result, regardless of the intensification of the US fight, as a "good victory" and a "proud reaction".
"How did it work so fast?" Asked Djordjevic to an American journalist, apparently still astonished that his opinions caused such a stir on the beast of social media known as N.B.A. Twitter.
Raise your curiosity about the ever-growing list of questions generated by this tournament. Especially for the two teams supposed to be the strongest in China.
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