Report: JaVale McGee, Keldon Johnson to replace Bradley Beal, Kevin Love on Team USA
Team USA needs two players to replace Bradley Beal and Kevin Love before the team heads to Tokyo, and it looks like they've found them.
ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported that JaVale McGee of the Denver Nuggets and Keldon Johnson of the San Antonio Spurs will be stepping into the spots recently vacated by Beal and Love.
Keldon Johnson and JaVale McGee will replace Bradley Beal and Kevin Love on Team USA's roster for the Olympics, sources tell ESPN. McGee will travel to Las Vegas to join team on Saturday. https://t.co/236CgYVau0
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 16, 2021
According to Woj, Johnson has made a big impression on Team USA brass. He'd been playing with Team USA during their exhibitions as part of the Select team, and looked pretty good in the exhibition loss to Australia.
Head coach Gregg Popovich tells me Keldon Johnson “performed well. He’s a physical kid. Played good team basketball. He moved it, took appropriate shots. I thought he was real solid.”
— Noah Magaro-George (@N_Magaro) July 13, 2021
Beal isn't going to Tokyo because he's entered the COVID-19 protocol, while Love withdrew due to the calf injury that kept him on the bench for most of the past season.
Team USA is currently 1-2 in pre-Tokyo exhibition games. They shockingly lost their first two friendlies to Nigeria and Australia before steamrolling Argentina on Tuesday. They were due to play Australia again on Friday, but that game was cancelled due to Team USA's brush with the COVID-19 protocols.
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