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Hoops heaven
From breakfast with Giannis to a nightcap with LeBron, Tuesday was perhaps the greatest day of basketball that has ever been played in a single location.
From Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel:
Maybe Bercy Arena — mostly known for hosting tennis and handball tournaments — is an unlikely host for such a moment, but welcome to the quarterfinals of Olympic basketball, a 13-hour frenzy of hoops like has never before been seen.
Nothing against some great state high school tournament or the Final Four or even Rucker Park, but Tuesday was like the first day of March Madness at some sub-regional site only with packed crowds of over 15,000 for all four games; not swaths of empty seats because one team’s boosters are out to dinner.
And these games just happened to feature the very best players in the world playing the most skilled and sophisticated basketball imaginable.
Oh, and there were no television timeouts so the games took about two hours to play. This was pure hoops.
Fourteen 2024 NBA All-Stars were in action, including six players who have won 13 of the last 16 MVP awards. Not to mention Victor Wembanyama was on the court, too.
The Canada-France game felt like it was being played inside Cameron Indoor — or Old Trafford — with the host nation being spirited on by banging drums, songs and chants.
Scoreboard:
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Germany 76, Greece 63
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Serbia 95, Australia 90
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France 82, Canada 73
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USA 122, Brazil 87
What’s next: France will play Germany in tomorrow’s first semifinal, followed by USA-Serbia in a matchup of the two most recent NBA MVPs (Joel Embiid vs. Nikola Jokić).
Photos of the day
🇨🇺 Historic five-peat: Cuban super heavyweight wrestler Mijaín López became the first Olympian to win gold in the same individual event five times. The 41-year-old retired after the match, leaving his shoes on the mat in one last act as a champion.
🇺🇸 Best 1500m ever? Cole Hocker out-sprinted the favorites down the stretch to set an Olympic record (3:27.65) and become just the fourth American man ever to win 1500m gold. Great Britain’s Josh Kerr took silver and American Yared Nuguse took bronze.
⚽️ USWNT returns to the finals: Sophia Smith’s 95th-minute strike in extra time gave the USWNT a 1-0 win over Germany, sending the Americans back to the final for the first time since winning it all in 2012. They’ll play Brazil on Saturday for the gold.
🥊 Khelif to fight for gold: Algeria’s Imane Khelif, the boxer at the center of the Olympics gender controversy, won her semifinal by unanimous decision to advance to the women’s welterweight gold medal match.
Day 11 recap: More from Tuesday
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Athlete spotlight: The women’s golf tournament is underway at Le Golf National, where world No. 1 Nelly Korda seeks her second straight gold medal.
Pure domination: After a T16 to begin the year, the 26-year-old rattled off five straight victories, including a major, to tie the LPGA record for most consecutive starts won. Then, after a measly T7 in her next event, she won again for her sixth victory in seven starts.
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The Florida native’s run was so dominant that her lead in the world golf rankings over No. 2 Lilia Vu was greater than Vu’s lead over the last of the 1,620 players on the list.
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Korda’s dominance has faded as of late, but she’s still the favorite in Paris. “Golf is a funny game,” she said Monday. “Sometimes you feel on top of the world and in a matter of seconds, you just feel like you’re on the bottom of the sea.”
Other golfers to watch… Team USA’s Korda (No. 1), Vu (No. 2) and Rose Zhang (No. 9) are joined by six other top-10 players: South Korea’s Amy Yang (No. 3) and Jin Young Ko (No. 4), China’s Ruoning Yin (No. 5), Australia’s Hannah Green (No. 6), France’s Céline Boutier (No. 7) and Japan’s Yuka Saso (No. 10).
More athletes in action:
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👟 Quincy Hall: American men won 400m gold in seven straight Olympics from 1984 to 2008, but they’ve managed just one bronze medal since. Hall, one of three Team USA runners in today’s final, has the best chance of ending that drought.
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🛹 Tate Carew: The world’s top-ranked skateboarder makes his Olympic debut in today’s park final, where the 19-year-old will try to dethrone world No. 2 and defending gold medalist Keegan Palmer of Australia.
Best of Team USA social: Gold medalist Gabby Thomas soaks it all in … Hocker and Nuguse make history … Americans try to speak French
Team USA: News | Athletes | Shop
Follow along at TeamUSA.com and @TeamUSA on social media.
Behind the lens
Each week during the Paris Olympics, we’ll be going “Behind the Lens” with Getty Images photographers to get the backstory on their favorite shots.
Behind the lens: To capture this multi-layered shot of the men’s 100m final, Hector used a clamp to keep his camera in place on the second floor of Stade de France, snapped eight photographs from the same exact spot, then edited them together.
Layers of the Games is a project I’m working on during these Olympics, where I place a fixed camera and shoot at precise moments of action, celebration, or defeat. Then, on my computer, I layer these photos on top of each other until I achieve the desired effect.
Although it’s a digital composition, I have set myself rules to be as faithful as possible to what the camera captured. One of my main rules when layering is that I cannot move objects in position; what happens in that place in the photo is what happened in real time.
Behind the lens: This was Naomi’s first time covering gymnastics at the Olympics and she had a blast photographing the athletes, particularly Simone Biles. “The past week was so amazing that I never want it to end!”
To capture this image, I utilized one of the glass screens on a scoreboard at the foot of the beam. It was a challenging shot because I had to align the beam perfectly for the composition to work.
I positioned my camera directly along the scoreboard screen, and everything came together. Discovering a new angle or approach is always exciting, and having the chance to photograph Simone was amazing. She wore a white leotard that day, which stood out beautifully against the black stadium background.
Behind the lens: The Getty Images team arrived in Paris with its most advanced underwater robotic camera ever, which allowed Adam and other photographers to capture swimmers in action like never before.
In this frame, Charlie Swanson of Team USA torpedoes off the start of the breaststroke during the Mixed 4x100m Medley. Our underwater robotic camera allows us to capture these really beautiful, dynamic, quiet moments from the bottom up.
I think the slower shutter speed (1/30th of a second) gives it a slightly painterly effect and dreamlike quality. I love trying to capture images that can alter your mood slightly and that take a little longer to sink in.
🥇🥈🥉
Watchlist: USA women’s hoops
Team USA are heavy favorites in today’s women’s basketball quarterfinal against Nigeria — the first African basketball team (men or women) to reach the Olympic knockout rounds.
Featured events:
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🏀 Women’s Basketball: USA vs. Nigeria (3:30pm ET, USA) … Other quarterfinals include Spain vs. Belgium (8:30am, Peacock) and Germany vs. France (12pm, Peacock)
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👟 Track & Field: Men’s 110m Hurdles Semifinals (1pm, NBC); Men’s 200m Semifinals (2pm, NBC); Men’s 400m Final (3:20pm, NBC)
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🏐 Men’s Volleyball: USA vs. Poland (10am, NBC); Italy vs. France (2pm, Peacock) … Semifinals.
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🛹 Skateboarding: Men’s Park Final (11:30am, USA)
Medal events:
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⛵️ Sailing: Mixed Multihull Final (8:43am, Peacock); Mixed Dinghy Final (9:43am, Peacock)
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🏋️ Weightlifting: Men’s 61kg (9am, Peacock)
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🚴🏼 Track Cycling: Men’s and Women’s Team Pursuit Finals (12:20pm, E!)
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👟 Track & Field: Women’s Pole Vault Final (12:15pm, Peacock); Men’s Discus Final (2:25pm, NBC); Men’s 3000m Steeplechase Final (3:43pm, NBC)
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🤼 Wrestling: Men’s 77kg and 97kg Greco-Roman Final and Women’s 50kg Freestyle Final (12:15pm, Peacock)
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🌊 Artistic Swimming: Team Acrobatic Routine (1:40pm, E!)
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🥋 Taekwondo: Women’s 49kg and Men’s 58kg Finals (2pm, Peacock)
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🥊 Boxing: Men’s Middleweight and Lightweight Finals (4:30pm, Peacock)
Non-medal events: Beach Volleyball, Canoe Sprint, Diving, Golf, Handball, Hockey, Table Tennis, Water Polo.
Primetime (NBC): Men’s 100m Hurdles Semifinals and Men’s Diving Springboard Semifinals (8pm), Men’s 400m Hurdles Semifinals and Women’s Pole Vault Final (9pm).
For a complete schedule, click here. Every event streams live on Peacock. Sign up here.
Why Kenya produces so many world-class marathoners
What is the secret behind Kenya’s distance-running domination? How has one East African nation piled up 50 distance-running medals in the past four Olympics alone?
From Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Eisenberg:
Genetic advantages alone aren’t responsible for Kenya’s success. Nor is it solely a product of the high-altitude plateaus and mild climate of Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, a runner’s paradise that has produced most of the country’s distance-running champions.
The single biggest reason is the deep motivation many Kenyans feel not just to chase distance running glory but to keep pursuing it under circumstances that would drive athletes from other parts of the world to quit.
In a country where higher-education opportunities are scarce and even university graduates struggle to find high-income jobs, young Kenyans often view running as one of the few available paths to a better life. It has also created temptation to cheat.
Daily trivia
With a third-quarter dunk on Tuesday, Kevin Durant became Team USA’s all-time Olympics scoring leader (men and women).
Answer at the bottom.
In non-Olympics news…
⚾️ So close: Astros lefty Framber Valdez was one out away from his second career no-hitter. Corey Seager had other ideas, blasting a home run to spoil his bid.
Plus:
Trivia answer: Lisa Leslie
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