USA Basketball Defeats Spain To Win Gold Medal At London Olympics

The USA basketball team with a traveling troupe of NBA All-Stars held off Spain, 107-100, to capture the gold medal at theLondon 2012 Olympics.

With Spain having closed within six points deep into the fourth quarter, LeBron James reeled off five straight points on a three-point shot and a driving right-handed slam dunk to propel the U.S. to victory and its second straight gold medal.

“This is all about USA. It’s not about me,” James told Craig Sager of NBC shortly after the final buzzer. “It’s about the three letters on my chest.”

During the first half of the gold medal game, it seemed like the post-game talk would be all about Spanish guard Juan-Carlos Navarro, who lit up the scoreboard and the United States perimeter defense with 19 points before the intermission on 4-for-6 shooting from behind the three-point line. Despite Navarro’s unexpected three-point barrage, the United States held a slim 59-58 lead, thanks largely to the 17 points poured in by Kevin Durant over those first two quarters.

In the third quarter, Pau Gasol exploited the one known weakness of the U.S. team: lack of interior size and front court depth. With his younger brother tethered to the Spain bench with four fouls, the Los Angeles Lakers’ star dominated, flashing his deft touch on his silky, sweeping shot and exploiting his size advantage under the rim. The32-year-old Spaniard scored his team’s first 15 points after halftime, single-handedlystaking Spain to a 71-70 lead when he completed an old-fashioned three-point play with just more than five minutes remaining in the quarter.

The elder Gasol’s one-man demolition of the America defense seemed to inspire his Lakers’ teammate, Kobe Bryant, who put up seven of his 17 points during the third. With Bryant and Durant ca