Olympic Men's Basketball Odds: USA Favored, Can They Get it Done?
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00:00Americans Jacob have been a heavy favorite to win a fifth consecutive gold
00:06medal at the Olympic Games since these odds became available but it was only
00:11minus 400 after the five-game exhibition series that led to a couple of questions
00:16perhaps about the US after their Olympic opener and the impressive victory over
00:22Serbia now minus 550. Canada a win over Giannis and the Greeks they have the
00:28second best price at plus 850. We saw four games of action on Saturday at the
00:34Olympics Victor Wembenyama and the host nation France a victory over Brazil
00:39Germany hammered Japan the Australians a double-digit win over Spain and then
00:45yesterday the other two teams in group C along with Team USA and Serbia South
00:50Sudan a big victory over Puerto Rico. Jacob what is your overall assessment of
00:55the Olympic field in men's basketball? I think the field is getting stronger and
01:01stronger by the year you're seeing more teams that can at least keep pace and
01:04keep games with the United States competitive as much as that game that
01:09they just played against Serbia was you know a big win for them and they
01:12dominated in the second half there were years when they would have won that game
01:16by halftime but the presence of a guy like Nikola Jokic and just the rising
01:20level of basketball talents in the country is going to make it harder for
01:23the U.S. to just put the hammer down every single game and you look at teams
01:27like Canada and like France where they have established NBA stars on that those
01:31teams I mean Canada has Jay Gilgis Alexander a legitimate MVP candidate
01:35last year the French have Victor Wembenyama and Rudy Gobert who if they
01:40could figure out how to implement those two and play great defense near the
01:44basket all of a sudden you're asking teams to make a lot of perimeter shots
01:47which Team USA can absolutely do but these two squads those two squads look
01:53like they could legitimately challenge the United States at some point I think
01:57the United States has to be viewed as a favorite as long as they have this depth
02:01of talent but the gap is definitely closing and I think that's a great sign
02:05for just the game of basketball on the international stage and as we've seen in
02:09recent years the parity growing within the NBA it's great for the sport