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Rio de Janeiro

After all of those perplexing nights when the USA basketball players fielded inquiries about why they were failing to dominate Olympic opponents, the questions and answers changed Sunday.

The Americans no longer needed to explain themselves after a 96-66 skewering of Serbia, a showing worthy of a gold medal.

Looking back, those four close games the USA played in Rio — including a three-point win over Serbia — become almost an indictment. Or maybe they served a purpose, creating just enough doubt about this team to make Sunday's convincing victory feel like more of an achievement.

Carmelo Anthony mentioned "a lot of buzz about us not playing well," and the questioning was justified. In the end, the struggles "made everything so much sweeter," Kevin Durant said.

These players wanted to be remembered as the best defensive team in USA Basketball history. In the context of gold medal games, anyway, they may have succeeded.

Serbia's reward? Silver medals seemed like too nice of a prize for this performance, except to those who remember how the team shredded Joe Ingles, Andrew Bogut and the Australians in the semifinals. That effort served to validate what the Americans did Sunday.

Here's all you need to know about this gold medal exercise: In an 11-minute stretch of the first half, Serbia scored eight points. In a one-minute span that fell into the same period, Durant scored eight points himself.

Durant delivered 24 of his 30 points in the first half. He thrived in this tournament, during a summer of scrutiny after he signed with Golden State. "So to see him bust out here was wonderful," said USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo. "I think it could really help his psyche going forward."

And that's the story from Rio, KD and the D.

There's more to tell, about how Anthony won a record third men's basketball gold medal and coach Mike Krzyzewski kept the Americans together when they wobbled in the middle of tournament. The players also became more interested; that's apparent. After giving up 88 (vs. Australia), 91 (vs. Serbia) and 97 points (vs. France) to conclude preliminary play, the USA held opponents to 78, 76 and 66 points in the knockout stage.

"This team kept getting better," Krzyzewski said.

In the bigger picture, Krzyzewski succeeded in restoring USA Basketball's pride and dominance after the three-defeat debacle of 2004 in Athens. He's making way for Gregg Popovich in Tokyo in 2020, after producing three gold medals.

Krzyzewski credited Anthony, a little-used member of that '04 team, for helping create "a great, great culture" of USA Basketball. "I've seen both sides of it," Anthony said.

The previous two Olympic championships each required 40 minutes of effort in the finals, with wins of 11 and seven points over Spain in Beijing and London. In Rio, Spain provided its usual resistance — in the semifinals, an 82-76 win for the USA.

In the rematch with Serbia, "We were prepared for a grind-out game," Durant said. It started that way, but then a defense that was alternately intense and invisible became a disruptive force again. USA assistant coach Tom Thibodeau's voice was audible in the top row of the arena, a tribute to both the building's acoustics and his relentless nature as he shouted instructions to the defenders. They got the message.

"Our chemistry is five-man offense, five-man defense," Thibodeau said, "so the guys have to understand what each other are doing. And that's what happened. As we went along, we got a lot more confident in each other, and it led to good things happening on the floor."

The semifinal version of the Serbian team that smoked the Aussies by 26 points surfaced only briefly Sunday, leading 14-11. It was all America after that. Just before halftime, Durant completed a cool sequence of back-and-forth passing between himself and Anthony by hitting a 3-pointer from the left wing.

That was the crowning example of how this team's best stuff surfaced, when it really counted.

kkragthorpe@sltrib.com Twitter: @tribkurt —

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