Draymond Green: 'Felt Like The World Was Ending' After USA Lost to France at Olympics

With the pressure of the Tokyo Olympics behind him, Draymond Green opened up about the mounting concern inside the Team USA locker room following the opening-round loss to France. 

Speaking to Carmelo Anthony on his YouTube show What’s In Your Glass?, Green shared notes from a players-only meeting Team USA held after the 83-76 defeat (comments begin at 5:45):

"“We definitely felt it. After that first game game, we had a meeting. It was just players-only and talking about what we felt we needed to do. Like aside from what the coaches felt, aside from what anybody was saying, what did we feel like we needed to do? And then after that meeting, it was kind of like the OK for everybody to be themselves. Normally we have like 4-5 weeks to prepare. We had two weeks from the start of camp to the first game. There wasn’t much time to really figure it out. ... So when we lost that first game, it felt like the world was ending. Because France beat the world championship team in 2019, and although none of us played on that team, you still hear that and you still feel that when you’re apart of Team USA. So when they beat us the first game, you hear everybody talking about how much the world has caught up to the United States. ... But we knew we blew that f--king game. ... So we knew if we corrected some things and played our brand of basketball ... we were going to beat the hell out of everybody.”"

The United States bounced back in pool play with a 120-66 victory over Iran and a 119-84 win over the Czech Republic before steamrolling its way through the knockout round. 

That led to a gold-medal rematch against France in which the Americans came out on top, 87-82. 

Whatever the players ultimately hashed out after the loss to France, the results are hard to argue with. Team USA won its fourth consecutive gold medal, and Green launched on an epic tweetstorm calling out commentators who doubted the Americans would win. 

As much as the talk at the time centered on how the rest of the world was catching up to the United States in basketball, it appears there's still a sizable gap. 

Considering the Americans only had their full team together for a handful of days before the Games opened—thanks to a later-than-usual NBA postseason—Green saw the gold medal more as a statement of how quickly everyone bought in. 

Now the United States has another three years to try to stay ahead of countries like France, Slovenia and Spain that have a legitimate chance to make a run at the 2024 Games in Paris.