For the USA basketball team, this week had been wakeup call where they were once defeated by players of a G League team in the practice game and now they were up against the national basketball team of Spain.
USA team learned from both of these experiences.
Donovan Mitchell led the team USA with his 13 points while Khris Middleton scored 12 points on way to USA’s victory over Spain by 90-81 in the warm-up game of the FIBA World Cup held on Friday night. The FIBA World Cup will be starring this year in China on 31st August.
Players of Team USA were able to shoot 55% from the field while from the 3-point range; they were able to shoot for 58% and were also on commanding lead of the rebounds.
Gregg Popovich, the USA team coach who has replaced the Mike Krzyzewski, the former coach of the national team, said, “It was a good chance for us to jump into the fray and have a look of what this is all about. This was sort of baptism for us. There are new groups, new players and new coaches. This was a real experience.”
With this win, the team USA’s winning streak now extends to 77 games. This winning streak goes back to as far as the 2006’s World Championships which is now called world cup where the USA won the bronze medal. This win streak also includes USA’s winning of the 2007’s FIBA Americas Championship and the Olympic games of 2008, 2012 and 2016 along with the world cup titles of 2010 and 2014.
Majority of these 77 wins for team USA were one-sided with only 9 being the ones where they won by a single digit. Spain had been their opponent 4 times in these 77 games.
Up next, Spain is going to host a game against the Dominican Republic for an exhibition match on Thursday in Madrid. As for the USA, they are going to visit Melbourne for an exhibition game against Australia on Thursday.
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