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LILLE, France — Watch Kevin Durant the next time he takes the floor for Team USA this Olympics. He lurks. He prowls. He waits. And then he strikes, without mercy and without stopping. As long as he’s on your side, it’s pretty damn cool to behold.
Yes, the Slim Reaper is back. Durant, already the United States’ career Olympic scoring leader, added to his international legend Sunday evening. Playing in his first game since the playoffs thanks to a lingering calf injury, Durant poured in 21 first-half points to help the United States shut down a frenetic Serbian offense and claim a 110-84 win in its first game of the 2024 Olympics.
“Maybe more than any player I’ve ever been around, when he comes back from a long absence, you don’t notice it,” Team USA head coach Steve Kerr said after the game. “I mean, he’s so skilled, and he just looked like he was in mid-season form after not playing in a real basketball game for a couple of months. Pretty incredible.”
Durant sat out Team USA’s entire Olympic exhibition run, and now it doesn’t look so much like a coincidence that they happened to struggle mightily over those five games. His appearance late in the first quarter was a timely one, helping settle a U.S. team that initially struggled to contain the whirling Serbian attack led by three-time and defending NBA MVP Nikola Jokić.
“He’s an impossible cover,” Kerr said. “The strength of our team is our depth, and we’re going to — we’ve got three guys who can guard him. And that was the approach, just rotate guys onto him and cross your fingers because he’s a brilliant player.”
For a team full of its own MVPs and NBA champions, the United States looked awfully rattled early in the first quarter of its first Olympic game. Kerr ran out a starting lineup of LeBron James, Steph Curry, Devin Booker, Joel Embiid and Jrue Holiday, and that esteemed crew almost immediately got itself into trouble.
Curry, debuting in the Olympics, received the honor of leading the Americans onto the court for warmups. But his first pass as an Olympian ended up in the hands of Serbia’s Aleksa Abramovic, who took it the other way for the first points of the game.
“We’re still trying to build our identity around who we are with this 12-man group,” Curry said. “It’s important to stay focused on not just getting a win, but how we do it.”
Embiid appeared out of step for most of the game, missing free throws, committing cheap fouls and getting bullied in the blocks. Perhaps it was nerves, or perhaps it was the unrelenting cascade of boos and whistles that accompanied his every shot, touch or appearance on overhead screens. French basketball fans, it seems, are not yet ready to forgive Embiid for the crime of choosing to play for America rather than France. (Neither Embiid nor Jokić spoke to media in the postgame mixed zone, bypassing opportunities to comment.)
Kerr had said before the game that he wants the United States to play a more fast-paced offense, to guard against international teams camping out in the paint. It was a good idea, except that Serbia decided to play an even faster brand of basketball, one that confused the U.S. into bad passes and cheap turnovers throughout the first half.
LeBron James, fresh off his stint leading the United States up the Seine during Friday’s Opening Ceremony, scored America’s first points on a breakaway dunk. But the real hero of the first half was Durant, who checked in with 2:33 remaining and proceeded to drain his first 3-point shot just 14 seconds later.
“If you watch him in practice, everything that he does in practice is game speed,” James said. “So it was no surprise that he comes out and gets right to it. But it’s great to have him on your side.”
“That’s what I thought about as I was coming in, you know, just staying ready, mentally staying focused on what the game plan is,” Durant said. “And when I come in, don’t make the game about myself.”
Durant’s first run lasted just over six minutes total over the first and second quarters, but he threw down 14 necessary, momentum-altering points — twice as many as any other player on either team when he left the court. He wrapped the first half with five points in the final 36 seconds, including a fadeaway as time expired that left him flat on his back, and the United States up 58-49.
“We wanted to limit his minutes and just ease him back in,” Kerr said. “He didn’t ease himself back in. He was brilliant.”
The second half was sloppy — Embiid, James and Booker all put Serbian defenders on their backs at one point or another — but also inevitable, as the United States continued to increase its lead and contain the frantic Serbian squad.
The game’s decisive moment came when James muscled in a layup to give the U.S. a 14-point lead, and ended up tumbling to the ground with Serbia’s Nicola Jovic on top of him. James simply threw Jovic off, leaped to his feet, and flexed in front of Serbia’s bench, the NBA’s all-time career scoring leader and Team USA leader calling game.
Durant led all scorers with 23 points, and when he exited the game with 5:33 remaining, he received a respectful hand from the crowd. James finished with 21 points, 9 assists and 8 rebounds in a dominant all-around showing. Jokić led Serbia with 20 points and 8 assists.
Every player on the American team except for Tyrese Haliburton and Jayson Tatum got minutes and points. But Kerr said not to read anything into that going forward; finding enough minutes for 12 players in a 40-minute game is a tough task.
“The key — and our guys know this — the key to this whole thing is to put all the NBA stuff in the rearview mirror and just win six games,” Kerr said. “And Jayson’s the ultimate pro and champion, and he handled it well, and he’s going to be ready for the next one.”
Among the backups, Anthony Edwards, in particular, brought fire. He spent much of the game at war with a horn-blowing fan behind the United States’ bench, glaring up at the fan after he drained a 3-pointer and, later, executed a nifty turnaround that left the Serbian defense scuttled.
The United States now moves on to play South Sudan on Wednesday, a team that gave the Americans some unexpected trouble during the exhibition run. But this time around, the Americans ought to have KD in the lineup, and that alone could make all the difference.
“I was tired, I’m not going to lie to you,” Durant said. “My lungs were getting used to that. I feel like I’m testing it again, but it felt good to make some shots.”