France cannot afford against USA Basketball All-Stars team. USA 98 – France 71

As expected, the United States cruise to victory over France, with the NBA all-stars clocking up a 98-71 win. Kevin Durant top scores with 22 points, with Kobe Bryant chipping in 10 for good measure.

The Olympics bring a sense of national unity to the countries involved and nowhere is spirit in greater evidence than the fact that basketball fans across America are ready to root for a team that contains both LeBron James AND Kobe Bryant, all in the sake of national pride. Yes, the 2012 US Men’s Olympic Team’s quest for the gold metal begins today in London where they face off against the French national team led by San Antonio Spurs point guard Tony Parker. A lot is at stake, this morning and for the rest of the Olympics, as the USA team is expected not only to win every one of its games but also make it look as easy as possible.

The 2012 team is playing under the shadows of the 1992 USA Olympic “Dream Team”, arguably the greatest collection of basketball talent ever assembled. Fresh off countless 20th anniversary retrospectives about that team, the latest pointless debate has been about whether or not this team would be able to beat the Dream Team. Everyone, including the president of the United States has chimed in with their thoughts, but ultimately the question seems foolish. Beyond the joke answer “Of course the 2012 team would win, the members of the 1992 team are all old now”, it’s really sort of an irrelevant question because the two teams’ situations are so different. Team USA has a much more difficult task ahead of them. Because of the expansion of talent, the kind of dominance that the 1992 team is simply not possible anymore because of how international the game has become (partly because of what the 1992 team did to spread the sport).

London 2012 Olympics : Mean Dream Team demolish Les Bleus in Games opener

The United States lived up to their dominant reputation with a rout of France in their opening game of the London Olympics.

Although the French, who have plenty of NBA-calibre talent in their squad, were able to match them for the first quarter, the defending champions quickly began to wear them down thereafter.

A one-point gap at the end of the first had become a 16 point deficit by half-time, before nearing 30 in the final minutes.

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