France has defeated Team USA 89-79 in a FIBA World Cup quarterfinal game at Dongguan, China.
The loss ends Team USA’s 58-game winning streak in international tournaments with NBA players on the roster. Their last loss was against Greece in the semifinals at the 2006 FIBA World Championship.
Donovan Mitchell scored 14 of his game-high 29 points in the third quarter to give the Americans the lead at the end of the period, 66-63.
They don’t mention Frank, but he played really strong defense in the fourth and scored some key points in the big comeback for France in the final quarter (he scored five of France’s 11 points in their deficit-erasing 11-0 run).
France went on an 11-0 run late in the fourth quarter to retake a 82-76 lead that they never relinquished.
Fournier lead France with 22 points while Gobert poured in 21.
While this was obviously a much worse Team USA than normal, it was still a very embarrassing loss. Kemba Walker and Donovan Mitchell really came up short in the fourth.
It has been 18 years since 9/11 and the Knicks, as you might imagine, have honored the victims of the tragic terrorist attack many times in the years since. I thought I would share some memories of 9/11 from Mark Jackson, who was in his second season of his return to the Knicks at the time, as well as then-Knicks coach, Jeff Van Gundy, who resigned in December 2001.
Here’s Mark Jackson, as told to Marc Spears (then with Yahoo! Sports):
I was living in Saddle River, N.J. I remember my wife calling me down to the kitchen to watch the TV. As soon as I went into the kitchen we were basically speechless. We basically sat there frozen in the kitchen. We couldn’t believe. We were thinking a plane accidentally ran into the towers. We were physically speechless with all the details continuing to come and then watching the second plane and watching the towers fall. “Being from New York City, there is no way in the world that you think that could happen. You can’t even put it into words. You grow up and think that the towers would be there forever and nothing like this could ever happen. And to witness it … and to know people that were impacted by it whether loss in lives or family members or friends … to this day we still fill the sting of it. “I visited Ground Zero, the fire department, the police stations just to see the hard work and the people that were impacted. You remember that the rest of your life.
Here’s a YouTube video from that time period of Jackson and the rest of the then-current Knicks team visiting firefighters and their families…
Here’s Jeff Van Gundy, as told to Adrian Wojnarowski (then with Yahoo! Sports). Van Gundy, of course, lost his college roommate, Farrell Lynch, in the attacks (Lynch worked at Cantor Fitzgerald)…
“My only regret was that he was a better friend to me than I was in return. He started in construction, and went on to do great things at Cantor Fitzgerald, but he never got caught up where he was working. He’d stop down to see me at the Garden before a game, and always would say something to me before a game that would have a way of making you feel good, making you laugh. “In 1993, when the first bomb went off at the World Trade, he had taken that long walk down from the 104th floor, in the dark, and I’ll never forget what he told me the next day. He joked that he was going to buy a parachute in case it happened again. And I still wonder now: What if? What if? “When asked about it, I made the mistake of bringing him up when I resigned from the Knicks. For that, I still feel badly. It wasn’t something I wanted to go into. I don’t know what part it played in my decision, really. I just remember landing back in New York after four games in five nights on the road, we had won the last three, I think, and not feeling that brief moment of accomplishment about what your team had just done. We had a bad day of practice, where I wasn’t any good at all, and I just knew it was the right time. I was used to doing my job one way, with a complete laser-like focus, and that wasn’t there. But the one mistake I made was bringing that into play, and I still regret it.”
Earlier this year, the Knicks did a wonderful memorial stair climb at the Garden…
Obviously, I offer my own condolences to those who lost any family or friends in the horrible attacks.