All of it ends, no more gold, no more medals and no more winning streak.
The reign of USA as the top reigning team in the international basketball has come to an end as they were ousted from this year’s World Cup title contention by France.
This is the first time since back in 2006 that US has sent in players from NBA to the international tournament and they won’t be able to win the gold. Evan Fournier took lead of France with his 22 points while Rudy Gobert added in his 21 points along with 16 rebounds as France won over US by 89-79 in the quarterfinal clash held on Wednesday night.
Gregg Popovich, the coach of team US said, “Any loss hurts but in this situation, it hurts really badly. Still, life goes on. This was very important to us, we would have had loved winning this but we are all grownups and we all also have families and our lives; so life still goes on.”
Previously, US had a winning streak of 58 matches in both FIBA World Cup and Olympic Games, which started with them winning the Bronze medal back in the 2006’s Olympic Games. After that, the win streak started as the team US won every match of FIBA, World Cup and Olympics.
They were bidding this year to become the first team ever to have won the World Cup title 3 times in a row.
The best of the US now at the tournament is to finish at 5th place but they are assured that the worst finish for them this year can be 6th place.
US were led by Donovan Mitchell, who scored his 29 points for the team. He scored all of his points in the first 3 quarters of the game.
Next for France is the semifinals clash against Argentina on Friday which will be held at Beijing. As for USA, they will face a game against Serbia in the consolation playoffs.
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