LONDON — There probably will be a movie made about the South Sudan basketball team someday. And the players representing the war-torn young nation added a powerful and dramatic scene Saturday night in a moment the raucous crowd at O2 Arena won’t soon forget.
LeBron James made a driving layup with eight seconds left to prevent what would’ve been an historic upset and Team USA escaped with a 101-100 victory.
Former Charlotte Hornets forward JT Thor had made a 3-pointer with 20 seconds remaining and South Sudan had three attempts in the final seconds but couldn’t convert the miracle.
The club is called the Bright Stars — the first team to represent the country in the Olympics when it arrives in Paris next week — and it gave Team USA a thrilling and serious test.
“I did not do a great job preparing our team, I think we did not focus enough on what they’re capable of and that’s on me,” Team USA coach Steve Kerr said.
“They played a wonderful game and the ending was good for us just to feel that. To feel what it’s going to be like in Paris and Lille … a good reminder that when we play against teams, it’s the biggest game of their lives and we have to expect everyone to play like that.”
South Sudan got up by as many as 16 points and threatened to pull off one of the biggest upsets ever seen in international basketball before Team USA pulled it out.
James might be interested in buying the movie rights to the South Sudan story, but he was determined not be portrayed on the losing team. James was vicious in denying the upset attempt, aggressively taking over the game when the U.S. was in serious trouble.
He scored 25 points and made a string of tremendous plays in a 23-5 run from late in the third quarter to early in the fourth. A power dunk that led to a three-point play and a 3-pointer were crucial.
“Don’t take nothing away from South Sudan,” James said. “They played extremely good basketball and that’s why the game is won in between the lines and not all on paper.”
James appeared antsy when Kerr elected not to start him or the rest of the game’s starters to begin the third quarter. Kerr has done that before during these Olympic run-up games, but he also wanted to change the tone after Team USA’s defense was shaky in allowing dribble penetration that led to 57% shooting and a wave of 3-pointers by the Bright Stars in the first half.
“I think the whole team was embarrassed at halftime to be totally outplayed and down 14,” Kerr said. “And I don’t think [James] was real thrilled about me not starting him in the third quarter. But I thought that next group that we put out there really did a good job defensively. And I looked down a couple of times and I can see LeBron chomping at the bit to be out on the floor as soon as he got out there and he went to work, so he was brilliant.”
Steph Curry made two clutch 3-pointers, helping end a stretch of Team USA missing 14 of 15 3-pointers that contributed to the deficit, in the run. And he said he and his teammates took away some lessons as they improved to 4-0 in exhibition games this summer.
“We can be beat if we don’t play our brand of basketball. And our brand of basketball is playing defense,” said Curry, who had 12 points. “We didn’t make them uncomfortable at all the first half and they took advantage of it. But we also learned we have that gear if we can find it, no matter who’s out there on the court, we can overwhelm teams for 40 minutes and it’s a great reminder of both.”
Anthony Davis, who had yet another strong game for the American team in what has been a tour de force over the past three weeks, made a series of plays to finish off a 15-point, 10-rebound performance and seal the game.
South Sudan showed off its tremendous collective athleticism and no fear against an American team that many South Sudanese players consider their peers. Most of the players are the descendants of refugees and grew up in North America or Australia.
They aren’t as much Cinderellas as they are castoffs, some of whom might be getting calls from NBA teams in the coming days.
Point guard Carlik Jones was the 2022-23 G League Player of the Year while on a contract with the Chicago Bulls but was released last year as a luxury tax-saving move despite being one of the best guards in the World Cup in Manila. He played last season for the Zhejiang Golden Bulls in China.
All he did was put up a triple-double with 15 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists, but he missed a jumper with four seconds left, the rebound setting off a chaotic scrap for the ball around the rim, where referees elected to call no contact and the U.S. escaped.
Marial Shayok, a 6-foot-5 shooting guard who grew up in Ottawa, Canada, was a 2019 second-round pick by the Philadelphia 76ers out of Iowa State and played just four career games before being released. He has played several years in Turkey and averaged 19 points last season with Shandong in China.
He was the best player on the floor at times in the game, scoring 24 points and drilling 6 of 12 3-pointers.
Thor, a 6-10 power forward who starred at Auburn, played 165 games with the Hornets over the past three years after being a 2021 second-round pick. The Hornets declined his option last month after he averaged 3.2 points and 2.3 rebounds in 63 games last season.
Thor had 14 points off the bench.
Wenyan Gabriel had all kinds of former teammates on Team USA. He played at Kentucky with Bam Adebayo, with Davis and James with the Los Angeles Lakers and briefly with Kevin Durant with the Brooklyn Nets. Gabriel has played 150 games with seven NBA teams but just five last season while on a 10-day contract with the Memphis Grizzlies.
He had 11 points and put constant pressure on the American interior defense.
Khaman Maluach, a 7-2 athlete with huge upside, is the highest-profile player in the group. The 18-year-old will play next year at Duke. Superagent Rich Paul was in London to see not just clients James and Davis but also Maluach.
He had seven points and three rebounds.
“We want to take the momentum, the mindset, the tenaciousness that we had [to the Olympics],” said South Sudan coach Royal Ivey, who is an assistant coach with the Houston Rockets. “We didn’t flinch.”
Joel Embiid, who was born and raised in the West African nation of Cameroon before moving to the U.S. at age 16, played his best game for Team USA, with 14 points and seven rebounds.
In 2021, Team USA lost to Nigeria, the African representative at the Tokyo Olympics, in an exhibition game in Las Vegas. It has lost nine times to seven different nations, three of them in exhibition games, since 2019.
Team USA avoided another loss, one that would have carried a level of embarrassment against a national program that has been in existence for only a handful of years after Luol Deng, the former NBA All-Star from South Sudan, assembled funding and the players with tireless work.
“There is a tendency at times to let down; I think the fact that we played well against Serbia the other night, this was kind of a natural letdown game that you fear,” Kerr said. “What we’ve learned with USA basketball is that the gap has closed … so it’s not a shock to see a team from South Sudan play really well and knock down 3s. The game has gotten better across the globe, but we still feel like we always control the outcome with our performance and as good as every other team is now, we still feel like it’s up to us to determine the outcome based on our defense and our effort.”
