LeBron James Took Over Late Against Germany To Save Team USA For The Second Straight Game

After cruising through their first three exhibition games in their tune up for the Paris Olympics, the USA men’s basketball team has found themselves in some perilous positions the last two games. South Sudan had shots in the air to beat the Americans on Saturday, and on Monday night Team USA found itself down three going into the fourth quarter against the reigning World Cup champions in Germany at the O2 Arena in London.

In that fourth quarter, things remained tense as the two teams went back and forth, with Team USA grabbing the lead back thanks to some terrific defense and a relentless downhill attack. Stephen Curry and Devin Booker provided a pair of tough and-1 finishes to put Team USA in front in the fourth.

Then it became the LeBron James show, as the newly announced USA flag bearer put together a bucket-steal-bucket sequence to give Team USA a three-point advantage late.

However, the Germans would not go away quietly, finding some big buckets from Franz Wagner (18 points) and Andreas Obst (14 points), and cut the lead back down to one on a lob from Dennis Schröder (13 points, 10 assists) to Daniel Theis (13 points).

But as was the case on Saturday night, LeBron was there to bail out the Americans. James buried just their sixth made three of the night at the right time to push the lead back out to four.

After Germany’s Andreas Obst missed a clean look at a three and then bounced a floater off the rim on the ensuing possession, it was LeBron’s turn to put the game on ice as he just physically overpowered the Germans, getting inside and patiently going up for a strong finish at the hoop.

James finished with a team-high 20 points, with six rebounds and four assists, and his late game takeover has become something of a habit after doing the same to South Sudan to prevent a massive upset on Saturday. It’s probably not ideal that Team USA has needed the 39-year-old James to carry them to wins down the stretch in exhibition action, but it’s certainly a nice luxury to have that option at your disposal.

Germany was just not quite able to produce enough offense late in the game, as they missed some good looks (none better than the Obst three that went begging with a chance to pull within one) but also found it difficult to get inside against the size and length of the USA roster. That figures to be a theme going forward, as teams are going to bomb away from three and hope to beat Team USA that way, because you can’t consistently get to the rim against the American defenders. That said, there is danger for Team USA with that as the strategy against them, because they seem allergic to taking threes themselves and the math game is going to go against them a lot of nights — on Monday, they were 6-of-17 from three while Germany was 13-of-45.

Still, they have an incredible advantage inside and will wear on teams, and as we’ve seen the last two games, they also have something no other nation has, which is LeBron James to close things out.