SAITAMA, Japan -- Team USA's invincibility in men's basketball is long overdue, and its journey to a fourth consecutive gold medal is already full of adversity.
France handed the Americans a resounding 83-76 win to start the Tokyo Olympics on Sunday. It broke a 25-game Olympic winning streak in 2004 for Team USA.
The final blow came when Evan Fournier drilled a 3-pointer with a minute to play, giving the French the lead for good, completing his comeback after a six-point lead with the Americas with four minutes to play . It was his biggest of 28 points in one of the best games he played in his career.
This was followed by an incredible capture in which the Americans managed to take five shots and missed them all. The final three were 3-point wide-open attempts by Zach LaVine, Kevin Durant and Jrue Holiday.
As surprising as it was to see all those omissions, he summed up a stretch run that vaporized Team USA in the second half, where he was outclassed from the coaching box down the aisle.
Team USA, full of offensive talent and set to be the best shooting team in the tournament, didn't score a basket until the last four and a half minutes. Time and again the Americans got open looks, and again and again they missed them. The team has various chemistry and timing challenges, but the terrible execution cost it badly.
This is the second time in the last three years that France has defeated Team USA. The first time was the 2019 World Cup in China, which featured a lesser US team. It didn't matter for Fournier, who had 22 points in that game.
Coach Greg Popovich, who said he had been thinking about this rematch for years and certainly daily since the game's draw in February, never knew Fournier slowing down as he went to the bar. The bar was free to appear open on the periphery.
French coach Vincent Colette also overtook Popovich in the second half by playing together Rudy Gobert and Vincent Poirier, closing the American offence.
Holiday, who flew 6,000 miles to Japan and arrived at 1 a.m. on game day, scored 12 points in the fourth quarter, leading the U.S. helped to get into a win-win situation.
But the main offensive weapons of the Americans melted the vibe. Durant played the worst game of his Olympic career, getting in the wrong trouble and shooting only 4-of-12. Damien Lillard was 3-of-10 and was way out as Popovich knocked him out of the game late in the fourth quarter.
The Americans now need to win their last two pool play games against Iran and the Czech Republic to advance to the medal round.