Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France — LeBron James was feeling some nervousness, some butterflies, maybe even a bit of angst as he listened to the national anthem play before his first Olympic game in 12 years.
It all went away quickly.
James and Kevin Durant — the two most-experienced Olympians on this American team — opened the Paris Games and a U.S. bid for a fifth consecutive gold medal with a near-perfect show. Durant made his first eight shots and scored 23 points, James added 21 points, nine rebounds and seven assists and the U.S. rolled to a 110-84 win over Serbia in the Olympic opener for both teams Sunday.
“That's the best game we've played so far,” James said after the Americans improved to 6-0 this summer, 1-0 in the tournament that matters.
James and Durant were a combined 18 for 22 from the field — 8 of 9 for Durant, 9 of 13 for James — as the U.S. had no trouble with the reigning World Cup silver medalists from last summer in the Philippines. Jrue Holiday scored 15, Devin Booker had 12 and Anthony Edwards and Stephen Curry each added 11 for the U.S.
“Whatever it takes," James said. "It's going to be somebody different every day. And we have that type of firepower.”
The U.S. improved to 144-6 overall in Olympic play, 56-0 when scoring more than 100 points. The Americans won without Jayson Tatum of the NBA champion Boston Celtics — someone who just agreed to the richest contract in NBA history — in the rotation, which even U.S. coach Steve Kerr thought was crazy when he decided to do it.
"I went with the combinations that I felt like would make sense," Kerr said. "I talked to him and he's incredibly professional. And that’s tonight. It doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way the rest of the tournament. He’ll make his mark. Our guys know this: The key to this whole thing is to put all the NBA stuff in the rear-view mirror and just win six games. Jayson's the ultimate pro, a champion, he handled it well and he'll be ready for the next one.”
Three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokic scored 20 points for Serbia, while Bogdan Bogdanovic scored 14. Serbia got outscored 54-27 from the 3-point line — a big liability for the Americans in the warmup games before this tournament, but a strength on Sunday — and let the U.S. shoot 62% while getting held to 42% from the floor.
With Jokic on the floor in his 31 minutes, the teams were even. In the nine minutes when Jokic wasn't on the floor, the U.S. outscored Serbia by 26 points. The final margin: 26 points.
“They got the best player in the world,” Edwards said.
Both teams return to action Wednesday, with the U.S. taking on upstart South Sudan — a rematch of a 101-100 escape win for the Americans in an exhibition in London earlier this month — and Serbia meeting Puerto Rico in what could essentially be an elimination game for both teams.
It was Serbia 10, U.S. 2 early. It was U.S. 108, Serbia 74 the rest of the way.
“We knew they were going to come out and play hard," Booker said. "They did the same thing when we were in Abu Dhabi. They have a lot of talented guys over there. We didn’t underestimate them.”
Before the tournament started, Serbia coach Svetislav Pesic — who coached against the 1992 Olympic “Dream Team” from the U.S. — said this version of the American squad was even better than that first NBA-star-filled bunch that took the world by storm at the Barcelona Games. And when told of that comment a couple of weeks back, Kerr laughed it off.
“When Chuck Daly coached the Dream Team, he never called timeout,” Kerr said.
It took all of 2 minutes, 41 seconds of these Olympics for Kerr to call one. Serbia
jumped out to that eight-point lead, putting the Americans into a quick hole. Kerr subbed Joel Embiid out for Anthony Davis after that first stoppage and things changed in a hurry; a three-point play by James midway through the first gave the U.S. its first lead and a lob from James to Edwards put the Americans up 25-20 after one.
By then, the Durant show was underway.
He finished his 8-for-8 first-half showing with a fadeaway, falling to the court, that beat the halftime buzzer for a 58-49 lead. And the lead steadily grew from there: Edwards shook free of Serbia's Nikola Jovic for a nifty baseline score to make it 84-65 after three, a play so good that Curry was dancing in delight and mimicking using a video-game controller on the sideline.
“Very, very important to get off to a good start in this tournament because every game is so big,” Curry said after his Olympic debut. “You only have six of them if you want to get to the gold and obviously, Serbia is a great team. They run an intricate offense and a very physical defense. KD was unbelievable in the first half and gave us a huge boost, and our defense in the second half opened the game up.”
