16 seconds. That's how close Japan was to pulling off the upset of the men's basketball tournament, having stymied Victor Wembanyama to take an 84-80 lead over France with just 16 seconds left to play. Make your free throws, don't let anything crazy happen and seal a potentially program-altering win.
And then something crazy happened:
French guard Matthew Strazel knocked down a wild 3-pointer while getting fouled and made the free throw to force overtime, where Wembanyama hit a huge 3 and poured in eight of France's 10 points to seal a 94-90 win.
“Matthew, probably the best shot of his life," Wembanyama said. "He's really taken the slow path, the hard path at the professional level, earning every single one of his minutes. It's paying off."
"We were trying not to foul, obviously," Japan's Yuta Watanabe said. "If they make three, we're still up one. The worst thing we can do was to foul, but I'm not going to blame anybody."
Wemby was again the best player on the floor for Les Bleus, pouring in a team-high 18 points to go with 11 rebounds and six assists in addition to his usual deterrence at the rim. The capacity crowd at Pierre Mauroy Stadium in Lille even started serenading him with "MVP" chants on the free-throw line towards the end.
"Champion maturity," French head coach Vincent Collet said. "Champion mentality. He was not good in the second half, but he didn't lose confidence. And he made the tough play."
But the first two games of these Olympics have shed light on how inconsistent France can be offensively, and it very nearly cost them down the stretch on Tuesday.
To be clear, Japan deserves loads of credit. This a fun, free-wheeling team, and it got a superstar performance from Rui Hachimura. The Lakers wing poured in 24 points in 28 minutes, going 10-of-16 from the field and hitting several audacious jumpers in the face of Wembanyama and Rudy Gobert to keep Japan within striking distance.
With just over eight minutes to play and the game in the balance, Hachimura was ejected from the game due to a second unsportsmanlike foul, seemingly spelling doom for Japan. But it was Japan that made big plays down the stretch, while the French simply couldn't buy a basket, making just one field goal between the 7:58 and 0:50 marks of the fourth quarter. (Had France not pulled out the win, Evan Fournier's shot selection — he finished just 5-of-18 from the field and 2-of-9 from 3, many of which came with Wembanyama actively calling for the ball in the post — would've come in for quite a bit of criticism.) Diminutive guard Yuki Kawamura picked up the scoring mantle, responsible for 10 of Japan's final 12 points of regulation and putting his team in position to pull the upset.
When Hugh Watanabe delivered a monster block of a Gobert dunk attempt to preserve a three-point lead with 90 seconds to play, it seemed like destiny was on the Japanese side:
That is, until Strazel's huge shot flipped the script.
“Like I said in the middle of the game, ‘Guys, a win is a win,’" Nicolas Batum said. "You've got to take a positive. We could easily give up, down four with 10 seconds left and we have no solution and we have a crazy shot from Matthew. Sometimes God is on your side. They were on our side tonight.”
The win keeps France undefeated and atop Group B, although there will certainly be mounting questions about this team's lack of reliable shooting and how cramped things can get on the offensive end. Japan, meanwhile, will be hard-pressed to advance after an 0-2 start but has left quite the mark on these Games already. Both teams will be back in action on Friday, Aug. 2, with France taking on Germany and Japan facing Brazil.