Olympics: S. Sudan's Bright Stars, Team USA to clash for Group C top spot

For their second game at an Olympiad South Sudan's Bright Stars will seek to take down team USA.

Lebron's James teammates trained in Paris Tuesday ahead of the clash.

US guard Stephen Curry spoke of an ‘appropriate fear’.

The US narrowly beat South Sudan during an exhibition game on July 20th.

"If you don't get heightened just by being here, I don't care who you are playing. We know we can't just sleepwalk through any game and feel like we're gonna play well, let alone win," he said.

"We're beatable if we don't play our game. But if we do, we have a lot of confidence we can beat everybody."

Both South Sudan and the US have won their first match.

Joel Embiid was booed by French fans during the team's tournament opener. He chose to play with the US instead of France or Cameroon.

READ MORE: Not Cameroon, not France. Joel Embiid decides to play for USA in Paris Olympics

"As I said, I'm American. I'm playing with Team USA. So, it's nothing."

The faceoff for group C's top Spot is scheduled on Wednesday (Jul. 31) 9 PM UTC +2.

South Sudan is the sole African team qualified for the Olympic men's basketball tournament.

The Bright Stars stunned Puerto Rico 90-79 for its first-ever Olympic basketball win in the 33rd Olympiad.

For the U.S., that’s no big deal considering it has been to the Olympics on 19 occasions and medaled every time. For South Sudan, everything is a big deal — first Olympics, first win, first time the world will be watching to see if the near-upset of the Americans two weeks ago was a fluke or not.

“Obviously, we’re very confident,” South Sudan’s Nuni Omot said. “We’re going to continue to play our game. Continue to defend. Anything is possible. It’s basketball at the end of the day. We all work hard. We all do the same thing. Just to be able to go up against a team like that, it’s a big test.”

History made

How this team even got to Paris is a story in itself.

Two-time NBA All-Star Luol Deng, who runs the South Sudan program and was the mastermind of making this happen, spends some of his personal wealth — his NBA contracts added up to about $175 million — to cover team expenses. The team doesn't have a training site in South Sudan. The players fly coach and experiencing things like seven-hour delays in Rwanda. And yet they did well enough at the World Cup last summer to earnthe Olympic spot, then nearly beat the US on their way to France.

“For us, the fact that we’re already here in itself is a massive accomplishment," forward Kuany Kuany said. "So, we just want to enjoy it, make the most of it, have fun and just show everybody what South Sudan’s about.”

That is, the good side.

South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after a long conflict, then a civil war broke out two years later and left nearly 400,000 people dead and more than 4 million displaced. Despite a 2018 peace deal between the warring sides, there are still clashes in South Sudan, the economy is fragile at times and human rights groups warn of food insecurity for millions of residents. The long-awaited election was supposed to be held in February 2023; it is now slated for December.

There will be no overlooking South Sudan on Wednesday, not after the last time these two teams met and the U.S. needed a layup from LeBron James with 8 seconds left to avoid what probably would have been called the most surprising loss in major international basketball history.

South Sudan's best player this summer has been Carlik Jones. He has NBA experience; 12 games of it, to be exact. And yet he dropped a triple-double on the Americans in London. If the Olympic campaign was a movie, sports commentators say he would be the plot twist.