Team USA’s Thrilling Win Over Serbia Is a Preview of a New International Landscape

Getty Images/Ringer illustration Getting to the gold medal game was difficult for the Americans. The gap between the USA and the rest of the world is only getting narrower. Before Team USA's thrilling Olympic semifinal comeback against Serbia, the Americans' victories were defined by a sense of anticlimax. The sides—the highlight reels, the LeBron-Curry two-man game, the mentor-mentee warmth of Anthony Edwards and Kevin Durant—were delicious, but there were no stakes. The existential crisis that drove the assemblage of American Avengers—national pride awakened by status anxiety after their loss in the 2023 FIBA World Cup—stood in apathetic contrast to their opponents with budding basketball programs that were experiencing the giddy highs of novel, incremental growth. On Thursday, the greatest players in the world finally met an opponent that forced them to be more than the sum of their parts. The Americans trailed the Serbian national team, led by Nikola Jokic, by 17 at one point and 13 going into the fourth quarter. It took 36 points from Steph Curry, a triple-double from LeBron James, a Durant dagger, and the most important performance of Joel Embiid's career for Team...