McGee, Johnson replacements for Team USA
The U.S. basketball team has lost two games and now two players on its road to Tokyo.
Kevin Love withdrew from the Olympics on Friday because of a right calf injury, forcing the Americans to replace a player for the second straight day.
Love’s withdrawal came after the Americans announced Thursday that Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beal would miss the Olympics because he was in health and safety protocols.
It means that much of the U.S. roster will have little time together before its Olympic opener July 25 against France.
“I think coming into something like this, you know that things can come up, especially coming out of a pandemic and the possibility of guys maybe testing positive,” U.S. guard Damian Lillard said.
“Injuries happen. People have a change of heart. You just come into it expecting that. But I think our primary focus was to come here and come together as a team … I think we’ve moved in that direction as a group. We feel good about where we are.”
Lillard spoke after the team’s practice in Las Vegas. The Americans were supposed to play Friday night against Australia, but that exhibition was canceled because of health and safety concerns.
Veteran center JaVale
McGee and Spurs guard
Keldon Johnson were added to the 12-man Olympics roster as replacements.
Johnson, who plays for U.S. coach Gregg Popovich in San Antonio, was a member of the select team of young players training against the Americans, and had appeared in two of their exhibition games.
McGee, who played for the Cleveland Cavaliers and Denver Nuggets last season, has won three
NBA titles but has no Olympic experience.
The U.S. was already short-handed before the losses of Beal and Love. Milwaukee’s Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton, along with Phoenix star
Devin Booker, won’t join the team until after the
NBA Finals.
A Women’s basketball: After weeks of feeling so anxious she could hardly sleep or eat, WNBA star
Liz Cambage decided the best way to ensure she maintained her mental and physical health was to pull out of Australia’s Olympic team.
The two-time Olympian has been worried about life inside the so-called bubble at the Tokyo Games, which are starting next week with the Japanese capital under a state of emergency because of rising COVID-19 cases.
Cambage posted a statement on social media to say the prospect of having no friends, no family, no fans and no support system outside of the women’s basketball squad during the Olympics is
“honestly terrifying for me.”
“It breaks my heart to announce I’m withdrawing from the Olympics,” Cambage said, “but I think it’s best for the Opals and myself.”
The 29-year-old Las Vegas Aces center said for the last month she’d been having panic attacks, not sleeping and not eating.
“Relying on daily medication to control my anxiety is not the place I want to be right now,” she said in the statement. “Especially walking into competition on the world’s biggest sporting stage.”
Soccer: Germany’s Olympic soccer team walked off the field during a preparation match for the Tokyo Games on Saturday in response to alleged racist abuse from an
Aopposing Honduras player toward German defender Jordan Torunarigha.
The players left the field together with five minutes remaining in the game after Torunarigha was “racially insulted,” the German soccer federation said on Twitter.
“If one of our players is racially abused, it’s not an option for us to keep playing,” Germany coach Stefan Kuntz said. “For us it’s clear, this violates our values — we cannot tolerate it.”
The score was 1-1 when the German players walked off. “After the situation calmed down a bit, the whole Honduras team came over to us on the bench and apologized,” Kuntz said. “That was the end of the matter for us.”
assists while playing 17 minutes per game out of the 40-minute international game format. Team USA’s fourth exhibition on Friday against Australia was canceled because of health and safety protocols, but it’s still scheduled to take on Spain on Sunday to close its exhibition schedule in Las Vegas before traveling to Tokyo.
Adebayo’s best performance for Team USA, so far, came when he recorded 12 points, five rebounds, five assists, one steal and one block in Tuesday’s exhibition win over Argentina. It was Team USA’s first victory after surprisingly dropping its first two exhibition games against Nigeria and Australia.
The one thing Adebayo has noticed in his first few weeks with Team USA is the extra space he has to operate underneath the three-point line. That’s because of the space the outside shooting of superstars like Kevin Durant and Damian Lillard creates.
“That gives me easier driving lanes,” Adebayo said. “It makes it easier for me to get a drive and kick, and then it makes it easier to get assists.
That’s the benefit of playing with those type of guys. You get easy driving lanes and easy assists.”
If the first three exhibition games are any indication, Adebayo is going to be a consistent and important part of Team USA’s Olympic rotation. He started two of the first three exhibitions.
Adebayo, who turns 24 on Sunday, is also one of the few post players on Team USA. The only other true USA Basketball frontcourt players are Golden State’s Draymond Green, Detroit’s Jerami Grant and new addition JaVale McGee, who replaced Kevin Love on the national team roster because of his ongoing recovery from a calf injury.
Green is the only one in that group who has averaged more minutes (20.3 per game) than Adebayo through the first three exhibitions. And national team head coach Gregg Popovich played Adebayo and Green together for extended minutes for the first time in Tuesday’s exhibition win, as Popovich surrounded USA Basketball’s elite scorers with the two facilitating big men to help fuel the offense.
“The one thing about it is we don’t want everybody on the court thinking too much,” Adebayo said. “So I feel like with me and Dray, we have a responsibility to do all the little stuff — the screening, getting people open, making the extra pass. And obviously go score when there’s an opportunity.”
Adebayo and Green combined for eight assists and one turnover in that game, a win over Argentina.
“They were very active, got everybody involved, and that’s something that’s really important for us,” Popovich said of Adebayo and Green. “Those are the kind of talents that they have, that fits best with our shooters, providing that sort of situation where shooters can get open shots. And we did it without turning it over, which makes it wonderful.”
Even though Green, 31, is a more experienced player than Adebayo, the three-time NBA champion admitted he has already learned a few things from
Adebayo. Green added that he sees “a lot of similarities” in their games.
“Obviously, the way he reads the floor, the way he sees the game, it’s incredible,” Green said. “He’s an extremely good passer and uses other guys to his advantage. That has been a big thing with him with the Miami Heat. He was actually teaching me the other day how to be more effective with the fake dribble handoff and was giving me a couple tips with that, which was incredible.”
Adebayo is also taking lessons from Green.
“How vocal he is,” Adebayo said of his first impression of Green as a teammate. “That’s the one thing that makes Draymond Draymond is how vocal he is and how much of a leader he can be without scoring or putting the ball in the basket, obviously. He’ll have a game where he’ll have one point, but have 16 rebounds and like 17 assists. Just trying to figure out how to be that impactful and knowing that I have the ability to score, it’s just going to help me along the way.”
Adebayo is coming off the best two seasons of his NBA career. He won the Skills Challenge, played in his first NBA All-Star Game and helped lead the Heat to the NBA Finals in 2019-20, and averaged career highs in points, assists and steals this past season.
Adebayo will join Tim Hardaway, LeBron James, Alonzo Mourning and Dwyane Wade on the list of Heat players who have played for Team USA in the Olympics. With the next Olympic Games coming in 2024 in Paris and then 2028 in Los Angeles, Adebayo could end up taking part in three different Olympics by the time he’s 31 if he’s also on the national team in 2024 and 2028.
There could have also been an appearance in the 2019 FIBA World Cup on Adebayo’s resume, but he was cut after participating in the national team’s training camp. Two years later, Adebayo is on the verge of playing a prominent role in the Olympics.
“I’ve always said before, I feel like I should’ve been on the team from the get-go,” Adebayo said, looking back to 2019.
“But Pop [and I] hashed it out, and I worked on my game. He said I wasn’t ready, so I had a point to prove that I could’ve been on the team. That was my goal. I did that, I’m here now, and it’s my opportunity to show why I’m here.”
Anthony Chiang: 305-376-4991, @Anthony_Chiang