With a championship glow and collective sense of invincibility, Jayson Tatum, Jrue Holiday and Derrick White find themselves in Paris eager to capture another crown.
No, Jaylen Brown isn’t with them, but the Celtics still constitute 25 percent of the Team USA roster. That’s not a coincidence, either. While Tatum is indisputably one of the nation’s 12 best players, Holiday and White’s winning DNA helped earn them a nod.
The United States begins its quest for gold on Sunday at 11:15 a.m. ET against Nikola Jokic and Serbia. Team USA is clearly the favorite and will likely prevail in the end, yet the exhibition games showed it almost certainly won’t be easy.