Team USA men's basketball closes out Rio games

Star-studded team takes on Serbia for gold

 

Team USA beat Serbia 96-66 on Sunday to win men's basketball gold for the sixth time in seven Olympic Games and bring competition at the Rio Olympics to an end.

Kevin Durant was the leading scorer for the U.S. with 30 points, while Nemanja Nedovic led Serbia with 14 points.

In order to do so, the NBA star-laden squad had to overcome a Serbian team that gave them all they could handle earlier in Rio. The Americans narrowly beat Serbia 94-91 last Friday in preliminary play.

The game was the last competition in Rio, ending just hours before Sunday night's closing ceremony.

America's current streak of dominance in men's basketball started with the Dream Team in 1992 and has only been interrupted so far by Argentina in 2004. The U.S. has now won 15 gold medals in the 19 Olympic Games since basketball was first contested in 1936, with one of those non golden years coming in the boycotted 1980 Moscow Games.

Serbia, which features only one NBA player in Nikola Jokic, finished group play with a 2-3 record, but beat Croatia, the top team from Group B, by a score of 86-83 in the quarterfinals and then battered Australia 87-61 in Friday's semifinals.

Serbia's silver medal is the second basketball medal for the country in Rio, with Serbian women's team beating France in Saturday's bronze medal game.

The U.S. men's gold medal follows Saturday's win by the women's team, which dominated Spain by a score of 101-72 in winning its sixth straight gold medal. The U.S. has won all but three Olympic titles in women's basketball since it was added in 1976.


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