Kerr: USA can't be lulled to sleep by past wins against Jokic, Serbia

The USA will play Serbia in the men's basketball semifinals at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics on Thursday. When the two teams met the last time, the Americans beat the Serbians 110-84 in the group stage.

But USA head coach Steve Kerr didn't want his players to be overconfident because of their past wins over their opponents, who have a three-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) in Nikola Jokic.

"We can't get lulled to sleep because we beat them twice," Kerr told reporters. "We have to be prepared for their best effort. We've got to think about what are they going to do differently. Jokic, I guess he could play 40 minutes. What else do they have up their sleeve?"

Jokic leads Serbia in points (19.3), rebounds (11.8), assists (7.5), steals (2.5) and blocks (1.0) per game and has been shooting 60 percent from the field. When he's been on the court, his side has outscored its opposition by a total of 43 points. Jokic played 31 minutes against the USA in their group stage game and the contest was more or less even while he was on the floor.

Serbia's resilience and offensive explosiveness give the USA more reasons to be careful. The Serbians trailed by as many as 24 points against Australia in the quarterfinals, but managed to come back and beat the Boomers in the end.

"I guess we'll be ready for that," Joel Embiid of the USA said. "If that's what they think they have to do to try to beat us, then they won't hesitate to do that."

The USA have dominated men's basketball at the Summer Olympics since 1992, winning gold seven times in eight appearances during that span. Serbia are two-time silver medalists from 1996 in Atlanta and 2016 in Rio de Janeiro.

"Every game is its own test. No matter what happened in the first two, it's about what goes down Thursday night," LeBron James of the USA said. "So we need to lock in our film session, lock in during the day on Thursday, and then come out and be ready to go."