Thursday’s semifinal match between the United States men basketball team and Serbia was an unfamiliar experience for the Americans, who dominated their previous four Olympics games. Coined by the three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokic, Serbia quickly led 17-0 and then maintained the pressure for much of the race, leading 84-71 ahead of the last quarter.

But as it always holds true, when the chips were down, Team USA rose from the challenge. The Americans dominated the last quarter, and in this period they actually scored 32–15 against Serbia while being behind for more than 35 minutes of the 40 minutes of the game. Surprisingly with 2:24 minutes left, Stephen Curry scored a three pointer put to put the United States ahead to 95-91 a final score that saw them through to the final.

Stephen Curry created the largest upset by scoring an impressive 36 points in what arguably could be considered as his best game ever playing for Team USA. This performance was the highest attained by an American player in a knockout round and only a single point bajo of the Olympic record set by Carmelo Anthony for the male basketball team of America. Given that Team USA scraped their way into the finals for gold medal on Friday, each of those points were important. LeBron James also contributed towards ensuring that the United States did it to keep their hopes of winning Olympics alive this time by beating Serbia.

These were third confrontations between both teams this summer as Team USA had easily beaten Serbia, in the previous two encounters. They had triumphed 110-84 against their first opponents in the group stage and had one even convincingly done 105-79 in an exhibition in Abu Dhabi.

Serbia has particularly struggled with shooting in those previous meetings, hitting just 27 percent of their three-point attempts (19-of-71). Serbia, though, was a different animal this time. Serbia made 9-of-16 shots from the three-point line with the main shooter being Aleksa Avramovic, who hit four of his six shots and Ognjen Dobric who hit three of his own. For the first three quarters, they hit five three-pointers and opened up a significant double-digit lead and having more control of the game for much of the time for Team USA.

Serbia heavily relied on their star player, Nikola Jokic, besides shooting which had been an area of concern. Jokic had not done too bad a job for Serbia in their prior group-stage match, or at least he had tried to do everything in his power to help his team; but in the 7 minutes and 15 seconds that he was on the bench, his team paid the price and was outscored by 26 points. This time, Jokic was on the court of about 38 of the 40 minutes of play and Serbia remained the leader even in those moments that it was a little without Jokic. Jokic scored 17 and was a crucial playmaker with 11 assists, the most of all the players in the game.

As people had expected before the start of the Olympics, Serbia indeed became the most challenging opponent for Team USA because of this change and the fact that they shot more satisfactorily.

Despite the fact that, during the Olympic games, the U. S. coach Steve Kerr brought in substitutes frequently, the final decisions were left to the team’s top players. Kerr only substituted once until the very end and that was when Joel Embiid substituted Anthony Davis at the last quarter of the match. This move produced a formidable team that had four MVPs: Alongside, we have Devin Booker, the youngest player in this rare group that includes Stephen Curry, Joel Embiid, Kevin Durant, and LeBron James.

This well experienced group played very good defense so that Serbia could not be given a chance to score in the last minute. Serbia fumbled in the last 12 minutes of the game where they failed to from the three-point line with all nine attempts and scored only fifteen points, which is considerably below their average of over twenty points in every quarter. Exploiting these turnovers, the United States transitioned and attacked in the spots where the opponents weakened, for instance Curry stole the ball and scored, extending the lead to five points.

"I'm really humbled to have been a part of this game," U.S. coach Steve Kerr said. "It's one of the greatest basketball games I've ever been a part of. They were perfect. They played a perfect game."

"For all of us being superstars and Hall of Famers on our respective teams and what we've all accomplished, the buy-in is there and it's the only way you can do it to win," Curry said. "To come back the way we did, I've seen a lot of Team USA basketball, and that was special."

Nikola Jokic got 17 points and 11 assist and thus showed his skills But Serbia’s dream of an upset was over as he got fouled in the decisive last quarter. In terms of effectiveness, Bogdan Bogdanovic scored 20 points and was always able to penetrate through the American defense line.

As such fans should be prepared for a repeat of last year Olympic final match when France and Australia have a rematch on this Saturday.

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