This Week In 🏀 can only say, again, what a difference a healthy Kevin Durant makes

Our usual Monday dispatch features lots of reaction to the opening weekend of men's Olympic basketball tournament

By the time that the single-elimination knockout phase of the Olympics begins on Aug. 6, this edition of the United States senior men's national basketball team will have been together for a full month.

You could begin to see Sunday that it is already starting to become more of a team. 

On rare occasions like these when it can truly proclaim to the world that it has assembled a full-strength roster, Team USA is truly vulnerable only if a rival in the 12-team tournament can weaponize the advantages it holds in terms of chemistry, continuity and familiarity with the FIBA game.

This naturally gets harder for The Other Eleven as the tournament progresses, which is prime among the factors that made Team USA's 110-84 throttling Sunday of Serbia in the Group C opener for both teams so impressive.

The time they've already spent together since meeting up for training camp soon after the Fourth of July — plus the splashy return of Kevin Durant after the program's all-time leading scorer missed all five Olympic warmup games with a calf injury — had the Americans looking more like a team than they have at any point this summer.

Not what the likes of Serbia, Canada, Germany and the hosts France were hoping to see so early in these Olympics.

U.S. coach Steve Kerr actually used nine players Sunday before putting Durant in the game. Durant responded with 21 points by halftime on 8-for-8 shooting that featured no layups, dunks or gimmes. Boston's Jayson Tatum and Indiana's Tyrese Haliburton, fresh off squaring off in the Eastern Conference finals, didn't even leave the bench because Kerr had 10 (mostly clicking) players ahead of them.

It's not really fair when you run through all that ... yet you can rest assured that there will be no apologies forthcoming from USA Basketball.

Not when the program got so much grief for seventh- and fourth-place finishes in those last two World Cups with rosters nowhere near this deep and imposing. And not after the panic that was circulating as recently as a week ago after a limp showing against South Sudan in a London exhibition game that so nearly resulted in defeat.

That's the deal for everyone who signs up for the USAB ride. Losses are not allowed. Every L, exhibition or otherwise, is treated as an international incident, no matter how well-drilled we all are by now about how much ground that the rest of the world has gained since NBA players made their bow at the Barcelona Games in 1992.

The flip side: It's an experience, when things are grand, that pretty much anybody and everybody in the NBA would want to be a part of. And that's how it looked Sunday with Durant back, with 39-year-old LeBron James so dialed in and with Team USA suddenly looking ahead of schedule.

Just like that.

The only real snag in the opener was the Tatum DNP-CD situation, but I expect Kerr to find a way to manage that. He has already roasted himself publicly for not manufacturing some minutes for Tatum and defusing such tensions is one of his strengths as a coach. Yet the overall performance against a Serbia team that won silver at the World Cup last summer without Nikola Jokić participating was too good to dwell on that.

Onto the rest of the standout stuff (NBA and otherwise) that happened leaguewide (and in my sphere) over the past week ...

Olympic Scores of the Week

Of the first six games played in the men's tournament, two scores jumped off the page beyond the United States' 26-point cruise past Jokić and Co.

1.  South Sudan 90, Puerto Rico 79.

The fledgling program assembled by former Chicago Bulls All-Star Luol Deng is the only team in the field with zero current NBA players on its roster … but it can also proudly declare that it has never lost a game in the Olympics. The Bright Stars are 1-0!

2.  Australia 92, Spain 80.

I realize that this isn't the same Spain we've gotten used to seeing after the United States had to deal with Pau and Marc Gasol in the gold medal game in both 2008 and 2012, but the Spaniards are still the reigning European champions and ranked No. 2 in the world by FIBA. Huge opening statement by the Aussies.

Stories of the Week (published here)

Monday: Summer League reflections, Olympic anticipation and a pertinent travel tale highlight this assemblage of Monday Musings.

Tuesday: Olympic men's basketball tournament preview ... by the numbers.

Friday: My latest around-the-league NBA notes led off with Chicago's Zach LaVine conundrum.

Podcasts of the Week (that I co-hosted)

Chris Haynes and I are sure to get together for a pod or two this month … likely this week. We regrettably have no episodes to pass along from last week but you will get our next serving of #thisleague UNCUT directly if you are signed up here:

Truism of the Week

One of the foremost French basketball experts in my life warned me before the Olympics began: "Embiid is going to need security over there."

I thought it was mere hyperbole. Or humor.

Wrong.

Embiid has been booed everywhere he has been seen in France. It's no secret why; Embiid chose to play for the United States after seeking French citizenship and a spot on Les Bleus' 12-man roster before deciding to spurn both the host nation and his native Cameroon to play for the Americans.

His ongoing struggles to avoid foul trouble in the FIBA game certainly aren't making the experience any more pleasant.

NBA Irony of the Week

The NBA introduced restricted free agency in 1988.

Players and player agents have hated it ever since.

It's a sentiment that the league office itself can now understand better than ever thanks to what's happening with the NBA's new media rights deal with ESPN, NBC and Amazon Prime Video.

Warner Bros. Discovery, parent company for TNT, says it has matching rights — akin to a team matching an offer sheet in restricted free agency — and informed the NBA last week that it is matching the Amazon portion of the new deal. The NBA responded by flatly rejecting TNT's attempt to match and formally announcing its 11-year, $77 billion deals with ESPN, NBC and Amazon, prompting TNT to announce Friday that "we have taken legal action to enforce our rights."

Something tells me Cavaliers restricted free agent Isaac Okoro, approaching August with little hint of a new deal, would love the ability to sign elsewhere and just say he's going ahead with his next contract.

Twitter Graphic of the Week

A handy breakdown from SportsBall illustrating which NBA properties belong to the each of the partners in the NBA's new media right deals ... assuming the deal goes ahead as conceived:

Magazine Cover of the Week

The NBA's new champions are featured on the cover of a new Gigantes del Basket emanating from Spain:

Final Word(s) of the Week

As I've mentioned often previously, I loved loved LOVED This Week In Baseball in my youth and have frequently compiled what I've referred to as TWIB Notes on this Substack to pay homage to the great Mel Allen and that life-changing show which debuted in 1977. Now my goal is to make it more of a full-on roundup of what I wrote, said, did, saw and maybe even ate, bought, etc., in a given week … with categories that I suspect will evolve as I get a better handle on what this piece should look like. Your feedback is appreciated in the comments section below.

(Editor’s note: After affixing two banners to this file for several weeks in a row, at the top and at the bottom, it is probably time to concede that running This Week In Basketball on Mondays has become a thing … which unfortunately crowds out Monday Musings. The NBA, of course, always names its Players of the Week on Mondays during the regular season, so maybe I shouldn’t fight it.)