Index – Sports – This is why America is afraid of the world’s youngest country

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Who would have thought a few weeks ago that Wednesday night’s men’s basketball game between the United States and South Sudan would be one of the biggest games of the Paris Olympics?

All it took was a 12-year-old African nation, one of the poorest in the world, to take a 100-99 lead in a preliminaries match in London days before the Olympics against the Yankees, nicknamed the “Second Dream Team,” and it was a LeBron James shot that averted embarrassment.

The African nation has since beaten top-seeded Puerto Rico 90-79 in the first round of the Olympics and will face the United States for the second time in a week on Wednesday at 9 p.m.

In the Yankees camp, they were preparing so carefully against an opponent that they were not underestimating them at all, that they introduced a whole new technical term, the concept of proper fear. Nikola Jokic Serbia was led by a brilliant shooting performance from Kevin Durant who scored 23 points, but on the principle of “it’s better to be scared than to be scared”, they now have enough respect for South Sudan.

“We have the necessary fear,” said U.S. coach Steve Kerr. “We know very well that we can’t play any game in sleep mode and we can’t trust that winning will just happen automatically.”

Regardless, the odds were stacked against the Fényes Csillagos (a nickname for the South Sudanese), with bookmakers predicting Durant’s team would win by 29.5 points. (Of course, there are no half points in basketball.) Of course, on paper the Bucks were a 40-point success for the Americans on July 20, when they were able to beat the Africans by one point.

“We beat them in a one-goal game,” Kerr continued. – I’m glad we played with them so at least we experienced firsthand how good their three-point shooting is and how fast they are.

Sure enough, the Americans made 14 three-pointers in their warm-up match in London.

Interestingly, South Sudan did not send any current NBA players. The best player among them was Marial Shayok, who is 198 cm tall and plays for the Philadelphia 76ers, and scored 24 points for the United States in the match in London. But the name of Wenyen Gabriel, who is 206 cm tall and currently plays for Maccabi Tel Aviv, but in the past played for six NBA teams, including the Los Angeles Lakers, is also well known. The head coach Kalik Jones, who is 185 cm tall, recently signed with the Serbian star team Belgrade Partizan, but he also visited the Chicago Bulls. Now, Jones scored a triple-double against the United States on July 20 (15 points, 11-11 rebounds and 1 assist)!

By the way, the South Sudan national team Luol Dengwas founded by the former Bulls star a few years ago, and the group has been growing rapidly since then.