Team USA update: White arrives, Durant still sidelined, reacting to shooting of Trump

2024 USA Basketball Showcase All Access – Practice

USA Basketball’s men’s stars may be almost as far away from the United States as you can get on the globe — in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, for a couple of exhibition games — but the news from home of an assassination attempt of former President Trump still hit hard.

Coach Steve Kerr — whose father Malcolm was assassinated by extremists in 1984 when he was the president of the American University of Beirut in Lebanon — was particularly moved and called it a “demoralizing day for our country” when speaking to reporters, via Brian Windhorst of ESPN.

“This is a time where we feel very proud to represent our country wearing USA on our chest, competing in the Olympics,” Kerr said. “We’ve talked to the players about how important it is to show the best version of us as human beings to represent our country in a respectful, dignified manner. It makes you want to do that even more so, because this is really shameful for us to sit here and think about what happened and what’s going on in our country…

“Obviously what we’re doing is very trivial, just playing basketball, but we want to put our best selves out there to try to give people a glimpse of what our country can be about,” Kerr said. “And then you hear something like this and it’s just so demoralizing and obviously so sad.”

Stephen Curry echoed those sentiments, saying, “It’s obviously a very sad time in general.”

There is news on the court for Team USA, which faces an outstanding Australian team on Monday — noon Eastern time here in the States, broadcast on FS1 — in an exhibition that should prove a good test. Australia has a roster full of NBA players — Josh Giddey, Josh Green, Dyson Daniels, Joe Ingles, Jock Landale and more — but also plays a true FIBA style (as does Serbia, who the USA faces Wednesday). The USA looked good in its exhibition opener, beating Canada in Las Vegas, but the Canadian style of play is more like the American and NBA style than the true FIBA/International style the USA will face in Paris.

In USA Roster news:

• Derrick White has arrived in Abu Dhabi and went…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/team-usa-white-arrives-durant-164059709.html

Author : NBC Sports

Publish date : 2024-07-14 16:40:59

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