By Harry Allison
As painful as it was for the USA to lose to France yesterday for its first Olympic basketball defeat since 2004, this was worse.
As the New York Post’S Mike Vaccaro put it:
In its own way, France 83, USA 76 was the modern equivalent to the Mike Tyson-Buster Douglas fight of Feb. 11, 1990, which also took place in Tokyo and which also took place with almost nobody watching back home.
Maybe USA Basketball isn’t Invincible Iron Mike anymore but it’s still stunning when it loses, but no more stunning than NBC keeping it off free TV.
This isn’t team handball, after all (all due respect to team handball).
I understand NBCUniversal’s strategy of placing the U.S. men’s basketball games on Peacock premium (which you have to pay for) as an inducement to grow Peacock subs. But they are going to take a PR hit that the majority of people were not able to see the France game live.
— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) July 25, 2021
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