There was to be no dream finish for Great Britain, just a series of what ifs and maybes, as perennial champions the USA completed the threepeat in men’s wheelchair basketball.
After achieving their greatest success in the event since 1996 by reaching the final, victory proved a step too far for captain Phil Pratt and his team, who flickered in moments but left themselves too much to do even as they attempted their customary fourth-quarter charge.
For the USA, led by the dominant player on the court, Steve Serio, who scored 24 points and made 10 rebounds in the game, there was a sense that they had the British where they wanted them throughout. While the size of their lead ebbed and flowed, it remained intact from start to finish and a four-point gap – 73-69 –at the end was probably as good as Britain could have hoped for.
“It’s tough,” said Pratt after the match. “They are a hell of a team and Serio was incredible, he’s one of the greatest to ever play the game. We challenged him to shoot and he came out firing.
“We stuck to our gameplan but they were the better team. It doesn’t change anything, the work that’s gone into this, the legends of the game paving the way and giving us this platform to express ourselves, I am proud of our guys. USA were the better team, hats off to them. It sucks but we’ll be back.”
While the statistics suggested an even match in terms of shot percentage, from the stands it did not look that way. The USA were able to pass their way through the British team, to create the space that made their shooting opportunities easier to convert. For Britain those moments were hard to come by and, when they did, as often as not the player presented with the opportunity froze in the moment rather than seizing it.
Britain’s most effective player by far was the towering Lee Manning who scored 21 points but contributed a game-leading 16 rebounds. Without him the States would have scored a lot more, and without his converting points from inside the key Britain would have been cut adrift.
In an unusual atmosphere in the Bercy Arena, where two American commentators were consistently foiled in their attempts to generate a call-and-response from a largely French crowd (it all culminated in the commentators desperately trying to work out whether they should even bother by asking, in English, “How many people here only speak French?”), there was a sense that the abilities of the American team had bemused the crowd as much as they had the British players.
There was, at least, a medal to be cherished and in particular for Terry Bywater who has played in every Games since Sydney and now has a silver to go alongside four bronzes. One of GB’s best ever shotmakers, the 41-year-old only entered play in the final minutes of the match and sunk a three-point throw with his first touch.
“We had such a fantastic tournament, the boys stuck together, but getting beaten by four points in a final, it’s going to hurt,” Bywater said. “[The USA] made some big shots down the stretch, they have a lot of experience in these finals and it’s the first time we’ve been there in many years. I’m so proud of the boys.”
