Nic Batum: USA Basketball remains the best, but France is getting ‘closer and closer’

Nic Batum: USA Basketball remains the best, but France is getting ‘closer and closer’

The USA men’s basketball team clinched their fifth straight Gold Medal against France Saturday with an impressive 98-87 win. It marked the team’s second-consecutive win over France in the Gold Medal game and their third since 2000.

With just one win (in nine games) over the Americans in the Olympics, French forward and 16-year NBA veteran Nic Batum believes France is continuing to close the gap.

“The U.S. is still the best team in the world but we’re getting closer and closer,” Batum said, according to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst. “We respect them, but we’re not scared of them. We’ll just go out there and try to beat them.”

France’s only win against the United States came in the 2020 Olympics during group stage, 83-76. With all due respect, USA was courting one of its least talented teams since the 1992 Dream Team, though it still got the last laugh. They have outscored France by an average of 18.1 points in their nine meetings, though that gap has closed precipitously to just four points over the last three Olympic games.

France’s team didn’t have Victor Wembanyama in 2016 and 2020, but it does now. It will also likely have both Zaccharie Risacher–the No. 1 pick in the 2024 NBA Draft–plus Alex Sarr and Nolan Traore in 2028. It will still be a very talented squad and well-coached by Vincent Collet.

“We could do more but you have to do the perfect game and we didn’t do it at all,” Collet said after Saturday’s game, according to Aris Barkas of Eurohoops.net. “Still, I really think with a little bit more, we could push them much more. Okay, we did it, we were not too far but I’m sure we could do better. We had the chance, We didn’t take it and we must think about it next time.”

USA’s victory Saturday was fueled by LeBron James, Kevin Durant and, most notably, Stephen Curry–competing in his first-ever Olympics–late in the game after France cut the lead to three midway through the fourth quarter.

One could assume that at least two–perhaps all three–of them won’t be back when the 2028 Olympics roll around. That doesn’t mean that USA won’t be talented–it may not be this talented, but it should have a ridiculously high floor and be the presumptive favorite.

International basketball is only getting more competitive. Perhaps we saw the dawn of a storied international era with Durant and James riding into the sunset. While USA will have players like Devin Booker, Anthony Edwards, Cooper Flagg and Chet Holmgren, among others, for the next several years, there’s no foregone conclusion that it will continue breezing through the Olympics.

At the end of the day, a wise man once said that you still have to play the games.

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