Who is serge ibaka playing for in the olympics

That intrigue paid off. He was part of a team that included Kevin Durant , Russell Westbrook , and James Harden in an era of relative success for the team, including reaching the NBA Finals which they lost in five games to the Miami Heat and the Western Conference Finals four years later. However, Ibaka — who quickly picked up English just as he had Spanish — stayed humble.

In the interview, he said of his countrymen back in Congo: "They view me as a superstar and everyone looks up to me. While with the Thunder, Ibaka also naturalised as a Spanish citizen, enabling him to play at the London Olympic Games. Spain won silver, Ibaka's second medal with the national team after gold in the EuroBasket tournament. He would miss Spain's Rio bronze medal outing due to a lack of fitness, and was not on the gold-medal-winning Basketball World Cup squad.

A half-season stint with the Orlando Magic followed in , having been traded from Oklahoma City in June That November, he set his single-game career-high points tally when he scored 31 points in a win against his old team. But it was with his next team, the Toronto Raptors , where Ibaka once again made his mark. He was dealt to Toronto in February and signed a three-year extension that summer, although he suffered a disappointing first full season with the Canadian outfit.

Toronto had added Kawhi Leonard to the team, and Ibaka was able to form a solid understanding and connection with Kyle Lowry. National team-mate Marc Gasol was also a familiar face for Ibaka, who averaged After the pandemic-affected season concluded with the Raptors losing in Game 7 in the Eastern Conference semi-finals against the Boston Celtics, Ibaka left Toronto for the next stage of his career. Unless, of course, Serge follows through on his threat to pout his way off the squad. If he sticks around and remains mad, though, it is my fervent hope that the United States fights fire with fire in the years ahead and deploys its most dangerous and enticing weapon: DeMarcus Cousins.

Big, mad and gifted is a hell of a way to go through life, y'all. Hat-tip to SB Nation. An Orange County mom has filed a police complaint after her daughter was left with a concussion from a sucker punch during a youth basketball game. After two and a half years with the 49ers and zero games played, Jalen Hurd has been released. The 49ers announced today that they have released Hurd, who had been on injured reserve. A talented athlete who had [more]. Bob Myers believes the Warriors will benefit from situations like the one between Draymond and Jordan Poole on the bench Wednesday.

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We asked Chase Young to grade the candidates, and he did not hold back his disdain for basically all of them. The Rams have made another serious splash by adding Odell Beckham Jr. Marvin Bagley's agent slammed the Kings when the big man wasn't in the rotation. The key to improving your golf handicap may be to implement a simple, yet drastic, change: play with the other hand.

Warriors owner Joe Lacob revealed what the team regrets the most about the roster. The team president who spearheaded the Raiders' move to Las Vegas is looking for a new job, too, after reportedly botching some tax payments. Plenty of teams have a quality big or two, but few have any single player as good as either Gasol brother, much less the ranks of bigs necessary to contend with any combination of Spain's three talented bigs. Yet over the course of group play, Ibaka played just 79 total minutes through five games—a total that puts him roughly at the median of the Spanish team's roster in terms of playing time.

That may seem odd given how good Ibaka is and how prominent he's come to be on the NBA scene, but his playing time thus far actually makes sense in the context of Spain's modus operandi. The Gasol brothers are far more essential to Spain's strategy than Ibaka is, and each can be penciled in for about 30 minutes a night. In the minute affairs of FIBA-style basketball which affords a total of 80 minutes between both "big" positions , that leaves about 20 minutes for Ibaka between slotted time at either power forward or center.

And though Ibaka's minutes total may seem a bit low, he actually hit that minute mark in two of Spain's five preliminary games and played 17 minutes in a third game against Australia.

The only true restrictions on playing time have come in games against Great Britain and Russia, each of which presented unique and reasonable circumstances for curbed minutes.