When is USA vs. France basketball gold medal recreation

PARIS, France — It’s a recreation the French needed. It’s a recreation the People in all probability anticipated. It’s a recreation the world most actually will likely be watching.

The U.S. vs. France. In Paris. For basketball gold.

“Unbelievable,” U.S. ahead Kevin Durant stated of the storyline, one so good that solely the boldest of script makers would dare to give you such a remaining act. The showdown on Saturday night time on the Paris Olympics is a rematch of the gold medal recreation from the Tokyo Video games three years in the past.

The U.S. is looking for a fifth consecutive gold medal and seventeenth general; the French are looking for their first gold after settling for silver on the 1948, 2000 and 2020 Olympics, shedding the ultimate to the People in every of these tournaments.

“I imply, that is what everyone desires, proper?” U.S. guard Devin Booker stated. “It’s going to be a enjoyable one.”

Added U.S. guard Stephen Curry: “I do know it’ll be a battle. That is what it is speculated to be for those who’re making an attempt to win a gold medal.”

Each groups ran the emotional gamut simply to get to the ultimate. France held off World Cup champion Germany 73-69 in a single semifinal, partaking in a raucous on-court celebration afterward as followers roared and 7-foot-4 star Victor Wembanyama was almost moved to tears. The U.S. trailed Serbia by 17 factors within the second quarter, by 15 within the remaining seconds of the third quarter, then completed on a 34-15 run over the ultimate 10:08 to win 95-91.

It was the primary time in Olympic historical past that each semifinal video games in males’s basketball have been determined by 4 factors or fewer.

“For us, all of us workers, gamers, it’s a dream to have the ability to play the finals in Paris,” France coach Vincent Collet stated. “That’s what we stated earlier than the (semifinal). I requested the gamers, ‘Are you going to let the German crew steal the finals out of your palms?’ They have been answering, ‘No, no means, no means, we die on the court docket, no means.’”

The gold medal recreation for U.S. males’s basketball is on Saturday, Aug. 10 at 3:30 p.m. ET. It will air reside on NBC and streaming on-line. 

Curry scored 36 factors — the second most in U.S. Olympic males’s historical past — within the semifinal win for the U.S., Joel Embiid savored extra booing from the French and scored 19 factors, LeBron James had his second profession Olympic triple-double (everybody else in Olympic males’s basketball historical past, mixed, has two) and Durant made an enormous jumper with 34 seconds left to assist maintain Serbia at bay.

For the People, the celebs confirmed up. For the French, it was maybe the lesser-known — not less than to NBA followers — gamers who delivered most. Guerschon Yabusele scored 17 and Isaia Cordinier added 16 for France, whereas the massive names like Wembanyama, Rudy Gobert, Evan Fournier and Nicolas Batum shot a mixed 9 for 32.

Didn’t matter. France nonetheless had sufficient.

“The desire to enhance, the desire to sacrifice to your crew, the desire to do the subsequent go, the subsequent play to your teammate, that was all the time there however we would have liked time,” Wembanyama stated of how the French have improved all through the match. “The intention was all the time good.”

And now the French get a house recreation in opposition to the largest powerhouse nation the game has ever recognized.

Within the first eight conferences between the U.S. and France in main worldwide males’s competitors (Olympics or the world championships, now generally known as the World Cup), the People went 8-0, with all these wins coming by not less than 10 factors and by a mean of 25.9 factors.

Within the 4 video games since — a three-point win for the U.S. within the 2016 Olympics, a 10-point France win within the 2019 World Cup that stored the People from medaling and despatched them spiraling to a seventh-place flop, then two conferences that they break up on the Olympics at Tokyo three years in the past — the perimeters are 2-2.

Mixed rating of these contests: France 351, U.S. 342.

“I imply, we’ve been that good, guys. , we’ve been that good,” Fournier stated. “We beat Crew USA in 2019. We went to the gold remaining in Tokyo. We beat them in a bunch section in Tokyo. So, we’ve been good.”

Each groups have been good. One will likely be good as gold.

Embiid will hear booing once more; he knew it was coming after selecting to play for the U.S. as an alternative of France at these Olympics. But it surely’s not the booing in Paris that has captured U.S. coach Steve Kerr’s consideration. It is the cheering.

There is a track — “Free of Need” by Gala — that has served because the unofficial crowd anthem of types throughout these Olympics. It will likely be certainly one of Kerr’s lasting reminiscences of his time in France. He and his assistant coaches have stood on the ramp resulting in the court docket throughout the video games instantly previous theirs in Paris, and the track has gotten his consideration time and again.

“They stored enjoying that European anthem that I can’t get out of my head,” Kerr stated. “You guys all know the track, and everyone was simply bouncing round, and I actually took my telephone out and I videoed the gang as a result of it was so particular simply to see the power and the keenness and clearly it’ll be even louder Saturday night time. And I can’t wait. I believe it’ll be one of the crucial enjoyable video games I’ll ever be part of.”

It is what the People got here for. It is what the French hoped for. One recreation, for gold. That was the message James gave the U.S. within the huddle instantly after the ultimate buzzer in opposition to Serbia, and that’ll be the message all the way in which as much as tipoff on Saturday night time.

“I advised them that it’s good to be examined. It’s nice to be examined,” James stated. “And our final aim, we’re one recreation away.”