The United States national basketball team has been playing in the FIBA world cup for a while now, not fairing as well as they should, but were still in the hunt for a bronze medal as of this morning.
After losing to Germany in the semifinals the other day, they had a chance to snag the bronze medal versus Canada early Sunday morning.
Lets just say, they didn’t make the most of it.
This game was historic for the opposition however, because Canada has now won its first ever medal in the world cup.
So lets go over why the US failed to beat Canada this time around, because you’ll be shocked as to who the X factor was in this match.
Dillon Brooks scored 39 points:
Anthony Edwards scored 24 for the US, Austin Reeves dropped 23, Mikal Bridges had 19, and the Bucks’ very own Bobby Portis came in fourth for the US in scoring, with 14 points in only 20 minutes of play.
Some of Canada’s leaders in scoring were; SGA with 31, RJ Barrett with 23, and Kelly Olynyk who scored 11 points in a little over 11 minutes.
That’s nearly a point per minute, from someone who’s a role player in the NBA.
However, I left out the biggest player for the Canadian side, Dillon Brooks.
He led the entire match in scoring, with a whopping 39 points on 12/18 from the field, 7/8 from three, and 8/10 from the free throw line.
Some will blame the US blowing it in overtime for the loss, getting outscored 16-7 in the extra period.
However, in my opinion, it never should have been taken to overtime in the first place.
Dillon Brooks only had 5 points in the overtime period, which means the US let him score 34 points in regulation.
I don’t know about you but i’d absolutely put the blame on that. Don’t get me wrong he isn’t a bad player by any means, but letting him score 39 is kind of a death sentence.
To put it into perspective, his career high in the NBA is 37 points, less than what he had today.
Letting a guy like that burn you this hard, is definitely going to make any chance of victory harder than it should be.
