Team USA Basketball exhibition game schedule: Dates for pre-Olympic 2024 matchups
The Olympics are just a few weeks away and Team USA Basketball will prepare for Paris with a five game world tour in Las Vegas, Abu Dhabi and London.
Many are calling it the best basketball teams assembled since the Dream Team dazzled in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. This year’s Team USA team has their sights set on Paris, but before the games start at the end of the month LeBron James and company will go on tour for the USA Basketball Showcase.
Star studded squad heading to Paris
After a disappointing showing in the FIBA World Cup, the biggest stars in the game banned together and committed to showing the world who has the best basketball players in the world. There has been an huge influx of foreign talent that has started to take over the NBA, but the US has always had international competitions to fall back on and demonstrate their dominance.
That hasn’t been in the case in the last few years. The American’s finished 3rd in the World Cup last year, and while they won gold in Tokyo Olympics in 2021, there is a sense that the founders of basketball are starting to lose their strangle hold on the game. LeBron James, Steph Curry and Joel Embiid are intent on changing that narrative in Paris as the US looks for their fifth straight gold and 17th gold overall in the Olympic Games.
Team USA is in a difficult group stage that features Serbia, South Sudan and who ever wins the Puerto Rico Olympic qualifiers this week. There are two groups of three teams in the qualifiers from Puerto Rico. In Group A it’s Lithuania, Mexico and Cote d’Ivore while Italy, Bahrain and Puerto Rico are in Group B.
Pre Olympic prep tour
There are just eight teams currently qualified for the Olympic Games which kickoff their opening ceremony in just on July 26th. Team USA is joined by hosts, France, Canada, Australia, South Sudan, Japan, Serbia and Germany as the only teams that are confirmed participants in this year’s 5x5 Olympic event.
Before the Americans set their sights on on the Paris, they will take a world tour making three stops, and playing five games. The first game of the US Basketball Showcase will be against Canada from Las Vegas, Nevada at 10:30 p.m. ET on the 11th of July. Shortly after that game, the team will ship off to Abu Dhabi to take on Australia at noon ET on July 15th, and then Serbia at the same time, two days later.
The final two games of the showcase will be played in London and against South Sudan on July 20th at 3:00 p.m. ET and against Germany on July 22nd at 3:00 p.m. ET. After that they will cross the English Channel for and head to Paris for Group Stage of the Olympics.