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We last left Draymond Green and Nico Mannion in two places around the world: Green was training with Team USA in Las Vegas, NV, while Mannion helped Team Italy qualify for the Olympics with a stunning defeat of Team Serbia in their capital of Belgrade.
At the same time, Andrew Wiggins suffered a devastating elimination loss as Team Canada fell victim to the Czech Republic on Canada’s home floor, although we were reminded of Wiggs’ versatility:
Men’s Olympic basketball pool play is set to start within a matter of hours of this writing, and Team USA has a tough opening game against Nando De Colo, Nic Batum and Rudy Gobert, the core of a very experienced Team France.
They tipoff at 5am PDT Sunday morning July 25th on the Peacock channel, which seems to be found on NBCOlympics.com, based on our preliminary research. Members of our Discord server tell me that streaming from Peacock is free so long as you can stomach the ads.
Nico and Team Italy are in a separate Group and square off against Team Germany at 940am PDT, also Sunday morning July 25th. The livestream will be on NBCOlympics.com.
Mannion arrived in Tokyo slightly before Green did. After a visit from his kids DJ and Baby Cash, Draymond posted on Instagram that the Team USA flight had been stuck on the ground in Vegas for three hours. When they finally arrived at Naruto airport, someone filmed them walking through the terminal, Dray was tagged on the post and he noted that Keldon Johnson had stolen a pillow from the flight.
Both squads had their turn of practices and Media Day at the basketball arena in Saitama, about a half-hour drive north of Tokyo, and Nico draped himself in a flag of Italy.
Draymond made fun of JaVale McGee being at the point of exhaustion after USA practice, as McGee had just joined the team to replace the injured Kevin Love and participated in zero practices and games up until that point.
Later at the USA media shoot, Green took pictures with Damian Lillard and Kevin Durant. KD had already playfully sparred with Bam Adebayo while shooting around during that session. Little did Durant know, this may have come back to haunt him.
At the opening ceremonies just before the entrance into the stadium, JaVale filmed Dray encouraging everyone — dozens of American athletes — to sing “Happy Birthday” to KD. Bam was standing right in front of Durant, who with his mask on gave death stares to each of McGee, Green, and Adebayo for the embarrassment.
Asked on Instagram if he had anything to do with the prank, Draymond replied, “Of course.”
The video of the lead-up to the opening ceremonies for both Draymond/USA and Nico/Italy is in the 17-minute video below:
Mike Brown is also currently the head coach of Team Nigeria. His staff includes many current and former Warriors coaches and trainers including Luke Loucks, Sammy Gelfand, James Laughlin, Roger Sancho, and security guard Tony Banks.
As Steve Kerr has added new coaches to his GSW staff, TheAthletic’s Anthony Slater has reported that Loucks will not return next season (Theo Robertson and Jarron Collins also will not return). We’re unsure if Laughlin and Sancho will be retained. Gelfand now works for the Detroit Pistons.
Nigeria faces off against Australia at 120am PDT on NBCOlympics.com.