Serbia vs. Team USA Odds & Predictions: Olympic Men’s Basketball

Team USA (-600) heads into this matchup with the best basketball odds to win a gold medal by an overwhelming margin, as they blew Brazil out 122-87 in their last game.

Serbia (+1800) stormed from down 24 points to a 95-90 overtime win over Australia.

Let’s take a look at the odds and predictions for this matchup.

Serbia vs. Team USA Odds

• Serbia Spread: +16.5
• Team USA Spread: -16.5
• Serbia Moneyline: +1000
• Team USA Moneyline: -2500
• Total: 184.5 

Serbia vs. Team USA Prediction

I predict that Team USA is going to win this game and cover the spread.

Devin Booker led the Americans with 18 points on 6-of-9 shooting, including 5-of-7 from 3-point land in the win over Brazil. Anthony Edwards came off the bench with 17 points.

Joel Embiid contributed 14 points on 5-of-6 shooting and seven rebounds. Anthony Davis added 13 points and eight rebounds. 

LeBron James had 12 points, nine assists, and three steals. Kevin Durant chipped in 11 points.

That was by far Team USA’s best performance of the summer, as everyone was getting involved, pushing the ball in transition, cleaning up the glass, clamping down on defence, and forcing turnovers while displaying active hands-on defence, whether they’re defending the pick-and-roll or guarding somebody on an island. 

Nikola Jokić led Serbia with 21 points, 14 rebounds, eight assists, four steals, and one block in the win over Australia.

Bogdan Bogdanovic added 17 points, six assists, and five rebounds. Vasilije Micić contributed 14 points and six assists. Marko Dudurić and Ognjen Dobrić each scored 11 points.

Aleksa Avramović provided 10 points in addition to his tenacious on-ball defence.

Serbia’s comeback was buoyed by forcing timely turnovers, moving the ball to counter Australia’s rotations, and grabbing 15 offensive rebounds, which helped them generate 24 second-chance points.

Jokić pulled down five of those boards, as he’s a safe bet to put points on the board either by himself or quickly dishing it off to one of his teammates.

While Serbia has the reigning NBA MVP and a host of knockdown 3-point shooters and slashers to the rim, it’s hard to envision this group putting up much of a fight against the Americans, especially at a time when they’re clicking on all cylinders.

Jokić is going to put up his usual numbers, and Jokić’s teammates will still get plenty of looks in their preferred spots.

However, Team USA is just such a strong unit on both sides of the floor. They can throw three NBA Defensive Player of the Year candidates in Davis, Embiid, and Bam Adebayo at Jokić at their convenience, and they also have Edwards, Durant, Jayson Tatum, Jrue Holiday, and Derrick White, who can all cover a lot of ground in a moment’s notice, to throw at opposing guards and wings to take away their airspace and force turnovers.

Those turnovers will often lead to easy points in transition, as each Team USA player can get out ahead of the pack and either get to the rim or pull up from a distance.

Team USA was also cutting to the rim off the ball at will in their half-court offence. When you have a guy like James who can either set up his cutting teammate with a pass in motion for an easy look or cut himself, it makes the offence incredibly hard to defend.

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Given how deep Team USA’s roster is, my best online sportsbook bet to make is the Americans covering the spread and moving on to the gold medal game.