PARIS — So much for the notion of Serbia’s men’s basketball team having a Team USA hangover.
Just two days after their crushing loss to the Americans in an Olympic semifinal for the ages, when they lost despite playing so well that American coach Steve Kerr deemed their performance the “perfect” game, three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić and his countrymen cruised to a 93-83 win over Germany in the bronze-medal game on Saturday.
Jokić was dominant yet again, as the Denver Nuggets star finished with a triple-double (19 points, 12 rebounds, and 11 assists). Bogdan Bogdanović, the Serbian team captain and the program’s all-time leading scorer who also plays for the Atlanta Hawks, had 16 points. Serbian guard Vasilije Micić also had 19 points. And yet again, as was the case against Team USA, the Serbians showed the basketball world that they have one of the best programs on the planet.
The bronze marks Serbia’s first Olympic medal since its silver won at the Rio Olympics in 2016. Still, with Serbia having led the Americans by 17 in the first half and 10 entering the fourth quarter, the pain will surely remain after they let the gold get away.
“It was difficult to sleep (after the Team USA loss),” Bogdanović said. “We didn’t sleep that day, that night at all. It was a late game, but the next day, we all wake up and (Serbian coach Svetislav Pešić) was ready with the (team) meeting. He was ready with the same meeting that he did the whole year — a little bit longer, of course. But that was his way. We believed. We didn’t complain. We weren’t late. Yeah, we play together. We win together. We lose together. We are together. We celebrate together.”
As Serbian big man Filip Petrušev said afterward, there was immense pride in this finish. The Serbians could have let the loss to America be their undoing, but they found a way to respond amid all that heartache.
“We weren’t going home without a medal, especially after what happened two days ago,” said Petrušev, who had 11 points. “We owed it to ourselves. We owed it to the country, to the people that supported us. Two days ago, the whole country was so proud of us, so we had to bring something home. That was the mentality.
“You all saw it two days ago against the best team ever (in Team USA), maybe, that needed all kinds of help, and maybe luck a little bit (to win). … But I just hope this is not our last time altogether. I think this team can … in the future, be even better. This might be one of the best teams Serbia ever had.”
Serbian guard Aleksa Avramović, who had 13 points, 5 rebounds, and 4 assists, was equally as proud.
“This was an amazing game,” he said. “I mean, 40 hours after that class game against the USA, (with) what we did, how we represent our country, how the people from Serbia look in the world, and how we played. Seriously, for our country, for each other, and how we fight (it was huge).
“We were on the edge to win against the best team in the history of basketball. That was maybe the best game in the history of basketball, because in the last 15 years, you had so many (NBA) MVPs on the court (for Team USA).”
For the Germans, who spent the early portion of the tournament looking like a legitimate gold-medal contender, the tournament came to a bitter end. One year removed from a FIBA World Cup title that was the first in the program’s history, they looked bound — at a minimum — to win the country’s first Olympic medal in men’s basketball.
But they fell to France in the semifinal (73-69), breaking what was a 12-game winning streak in international tournaments. Then came Serbia, and the hot start that had them playing catch-up throughout.
The Serbians were sharp early, as they led 30-21 after the first quarter and were nearly as “perfect” as they had been against the Americans. They hit 12 of their first 17 shots (70.5 percent), with Bogdanović burying a 3 to spark the scoring. Jokić played bully-ball from there, plowing through German big man Daniel Theis (of the New Orleans Pelicans) twice for buckets from there and scoring on another possession where he worked his way through three defenders. Point guard Dennis Schröder, who had 8 first-quarter points, helped keep the Germans somewhat close.
The two teams were virtually even in the second quarter, with Serbia leading 46-38 at halftime after they finally cooled off from the field (missing 10 of 14 shots in the second). But Germany’s three most prominent NBA players had been far worse, with Schröder (Brooklyn Nets), Mo Wagner and Franz Wagner (of the Orlando Magic) shooting a combined 4 of 20 from the field at the break.
Serbia blew the game open in the third quarter, going on an 18-7 run in which 3s from Avramović and Ognjen Dobrić capped the run and put Germany in a 64-45 hole that would prove too deep.
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(Top photo of Nikola Jokić celebrating during Saturday’s bronze-medal game: Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBAE via Getty Images)
