Culture
U.S. men's basketball thwarts Puerto Rico to secure No. 1 seed
VILLENEUVE-D’ASCQ, France — The “Lille Olympics” are over for Team USA and went mostly according to plan.
A few defensive hiccups here, a minor injury there, oh, and a bus ride or two because someone lit the train track on fire last weekend, disrupting team plans for trains between Paris and Lille, which is on the Belgian border.
But otherwise, the American team of stars is exactly where it planned to be as the tournament shifts to Paris for the knockout rounds, with full steam ahead toward a fifth consecutive gold medal.
Team USA beat Puerto Rico 104-83 behind 26 points from Anthony Edwards on Saturday to finish 3-0 in pool play and as the No. 1 overall seed for the Olympic quarterfinals.
The U.S. emerged from pool play No. 1 overall due to a 64-plus point differential over the three games and will play Brazil in an Olympic quarterfinal Tuesday at Accor Arena — where the NBA typically plays when it has games in Paris.
“I mean, number one, it’s been really fun to be in Lille — it’s a beautiful place,” Team USA coach Steve Kerr said. “I think we got done what we wanted to accomplish, winning all three games and securing the top seed. We know we have to play better. Part of this tournament is it gets harder as you go, of course. And our goal is just to try to get better each game and we’ll have tomorrow off and then a one-week sprint, three games. So we’ll see how we do.”
Brazil went 1-2, losing by double digits to both France and Germany but connecting on 17 3s in an 18-point win over Japan to advance to the quarterfinals. The Germans and Canadians also went 3-0 in pool play and Germany is ranked second behind the U.S.
“We’ve seen almost everybody. We haven’t seen Brazil though,” Kerr said. “Brazil is our focus.”
The first portion of the men’s and women’s tournaments were moved to an outdoor soccer stadium with a retractable roof, just outside of Lille, primarily so gymnastics could take place in Accor Arena. The U.S. stayed and practiced in Paris but traveled to Lille the night before each of the three games, which also included comfortable wins over Serbia and South Sudan.
Edwards, Team USA’s youngest player at age 22, came off the bench to shoot 11 of 15 with three rebounds, three assists and two steals. The leading scorer for the Americans last summer at the World Cup, Edwards dazzled with an array of drives to the rim, mid-range jumpers and three 3s. His coolest play was a tap-away steal and windmill slam with about nine minutes left and the Americans up by 25.
Anthony Edwards breaks out the WINDMILL in Paris! 🔥 #ParisOlympics
📺 NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/FdFYNz5eXr
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 3, 2024
“I wanted to go between the legs (in the air for a dunk), but I ain’t tried it in a minute so I didn’t want to embarrass myself,” Edwards said. “I want to dunk on somebody, but I ain’t got a lane yet. I’m glad I got that one.”
LeBron James, as usual for this tournament, handed in a complete performance with 10 points, eight assists and six rebounds in just 18 minutes. Kevin Durant scored 11 points and still needs four more to become USA Basketball’s all-time leading scorer at the Olympics for both the men’s and women’s programs, ahead of Lisa Leslie (488 career points).
Edwards’ domination in the second half (he scored 14 points from late in the third to the middle of the fourth quarter, with Durant on the court) had something to do with Durant falling just short of passing Leslie.
Joel Embiid returned to the U.S. starting lineup after sitting out against South Sudan. He scored 15 points with three boards in nearly 23 minutes. In a confounding twist, the French crowd continued to boo him each time he touched the ball, but the crowd at large erupted in applause when he scored or blocked a shot. There were American fans in the building, sure, but the applause was so loud, that at least some of the people booing him for picking Team USA over France for the Olympics also had to be cheering when he scored.
“I think that’s all you can do is laugh about it and he’s done a good job just making light of it,” Kerr said. “And his teammates, obviously, have his back, but it’s all part of it. I’m sure he knew this was coming and what I liked is that after the French fans would boo, you could hear the American fans cheer and so everybody seems to be having some fun with it.”
With the U.S. ahead by an insurmountable number and the clock winding down, Embiid held the ball to run out the clock and was hit with another chorus of boos. He stuck his hand to his ear, as though he wanted the boos to grow louder. Over the last two games, Embiid’s U.S. teammates have joined him in taunting the crowd in response to the boos.
“I love it,” Edwards said. “I don’t get what’s going on, so I’m all for it.”
Jrue Holiday did not play due to an ankle injury suffered in Wednesday’s win; Kerr said Holiday will play against Brazil and could have participated Saturday. Jayson Tatum started for Holiday and finished with 10 points.
Jose Alvarado of the New Orleans Pelicans, the only NBA player on the Puerto Rican roster, led his team with 18 points. The Puerto Ricans outrebounded Team USA, 51-48, despite a distinct size and skill disadvantage in the post. By American standards, the 11 turnovers the U.S. committed weren’t bad, but giving up 18 offensive rebounds to Puerto Rico is something to clean up before Tuesday.
Nearly 20 years ago to the day (12 days shy of the anniversary, if we’re counting), Puerto Rico opened the 2004 Olympics by pulling one of the largest international upsets in history, defeating the Americans by 19 points. It was the first loss by a Team USA squad with NBA players.
And for about 17 minutes in the first half, a hint of possibility that another huge upset wafted in the air. Alvarado scored nine points in the first quarter and the Puerto Ricans led by as many as eight. It was a 46-43 game with 3:15 left before halftime when James threw a dazzling behind-the-back pass to Embiid for a layup. That play sparked an 18-2 run to close the half for the Americans, who carried a 64-45 lead into the break.
James, 39, had six points and three assists during the run.
It was ALL Team USA in the first half against Puerto Rico. 💪 #ParisOlympics
📺 NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/E2IOR4x55x
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 3, 2024
“I think we’re in a good place,” James said. “We can always get off to a better start to start games, but teams are very excited to go against us and it’s not a feel-out, but we could do a better job starting the games. Giving up (29) in the first quarter today, we didn’t like that and we got better from that moment on though.”
While Durant is looking for what would be an Olympic record four gold medals in men’s basketball, James can get his third gold with three more wins. He was on the team that lost to Puerto Rico 20 years ago, co-captained the Redeem Team four years later with Kobe Bryant and was part of the 2012 team that dominated in London.
This summer, counting five exhibition games and three Olympic contests, James leads the team in scoring and assists.
“Maybe one of the best things about this trip for me has been to see LeBron behind the scenes, see the preparation, see the focus and getting a picture for why he is who he is,” Kerr said. “It’s just amazing to watch him. He loves the game so much. He loves the work, he loves his teammates. There’s an energy and a joy to LeBron that just, it sort of spreads through the locker room.”
Required reading
(Photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights places where authors were born (or lived) that later became locations in their books. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the works if you’d like to do further reading.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
For those of us in the national memory-keeping business, anniversaries hold near-totemic power. Satisfyingly round units of time, ideally bearing fancy, Latin-derived names, serve as the overburdened pegs on which to hang think pieces and museum exhibits, revisionist documentaries and maudlin public ceremonies. The arbitrary nature of such occasions is precisely what gives them their charge, inviting us to set aside complacency and submit to a comprehensive check-in.
In his new book, “America, U.S.A.,” Eddie S. Glaude Jr. presents an intriguing variation on the genre, seeing the country’s 250th birthday as an anniversary of anniversaries: 50 years since the malaise-ridden, schlock-heavy Bicentennial. A century since the subdued Prohibition-era Sesquicentennial. A century and a half since telegraphed reports of George Armstrong Custer’s defeat by the Lakota and Cheyenne at Little Bighorn rudely interrupted the Gilded Age Republic’s 100th birthday party.
If an anniversary offers a snapshot of a moment, the core of Glaude’s book is an old-timey photo album, a collection of notable episodes from earlier national reckonings, long-ago glances in the mirror. An estimable scholar of Black history, politics and religion at Princeton — best known for “Begin Again,” his 2020 meditation on James Baldwin’s relevance for our times — Glaude focuses, as his subtitle puts it, on “how race shadows the nation’s anniversaries.”
Such celebrations, he contends, have never really been the moments for honest self-reflection they are often advertised to be. Instead, the nation usually shatters the mirror, refusing to accept what it prefers not to see. “American anniversaries are often moments to turn a blind eye to the evils of the past and the present,” Glaude writes, “to suppress the fact of America’s divided soul.”
It’s a clever concept, and, needless to say, perfectly timed. Last year, Glaude notes, the Trump administration executed a hostile takeover of the government’s studiously bipartisan 250th anniversary planning. It is now preparing a program that is certain to conceal more than it reveals about the country ostensibly being celebrated.
Glaude, in no mood for celebration, argues that such omissions and evasions also defined commemorations in the past. In 1875, Frederick Douglass predicted “one grand Centennial hosannah of peace and good will to all the white race of this country.” He was right: The nation reached 100 years old at a crucial moment in the post-Civil War fight over racial equality, with white Northerners ready to give up on Southern Reconstruction. The occasion would help the once-warring sections to reunite around a shared commitment to white supremacy. On May 10, 1876, at the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the police tried to bar Douglass from the grandstand, until a white politician vouched for him.
The 150th anniversary came soon after a resurgent Ku Klux Klan successfully pushed for a restrictive immigration law aimed at keeping America a “Nordic” nation. At the lavishly funded, lightly attended celebrations in Philadelphia, Black veterans of World War I were excluded from marching in the opening parade. A writer with The Associated Negro Press wondered “what was in the breast of those black men who fought to make America safe for Democracy and on Monday stood on the sidelines, forgotten, as the Nordic strode by in all his vain pride.”
By 1976, when the nation marked its Bicentennial, the violence of the ’60s had destroyed any semblance of consensus. Vietnam and Watergate had eroded trust in the government. The commission initially tasked with organizing the anniversary was disbanded amid reports of corruption. Corporations filled the vacuum, Glaude explains, with “star-spangled whoopee cushions; patriotic toilet seats; Liberty hamburgers; red, white and blue beer cans.” The author, around 8 years old at the time, dimly remembers donning a pair of tricolor trousers.
A half-century later, Glaude is refreshingly honest about the depths of his despair. “I do not love America, and never have, especially now,” he writes in one of the more startling opening sentences I’ve read in some time. He dismisses this year’s Semiquincentennial as reaching back “to a storybook America that requires either the banishment of Black people from view or the reduction of our role in the country’s history, so as to affirm America’s ongoing quest to be a more perfect union.”
Undoubtedly true. But Trump doesn’t own the country, at least not yet, nor the 250th anniversary of one of the most radically liberatory and confusingly contradictory events in world history — an inspiration, as Glaude shows, even to critical observers of the American experiment, like Douglass. Far from the revanchist MAGA-palooza in Washington, I suspect this summer’s unasked-for invitation to national soul-searching may surprise us yet.
Despite his despair, Glaude concludes that “the past still offers resources for us to freedom-dream.” So, too, does this book.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries | By Eddie S. Glaude Jr. | Crown | 270 pp. | $31
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