Basketball On The Internet.

IT WILL be difficult to resist reading too much into tonight's pre-Olympic warm-up clash between the Boomers and the USA in Abu Dhabi after the defending gold medal champions beat Canada 86-72 in an exhibition last week, the result a far cry from a Kevin Durant promise.

It was Durant who in late April predicted this latest US "Redeem Team" wanted to top the legendary 1992 Dream Team by winning matches by 40-50 points.

Admittedly, Durant (calf injury) did not play in the 14-point win over Canada, a match the US team treated as a step along a journey of redemption after its C-level national team lost to the Canadians in the bronze medal match at last year's FIBA World Cup.

So perhaps a 40-50 point-win wasn't on coach Steve Kerr's whiteboard but like all the teams attending the Games, the USA will be respected and universally accepted as the one to beat for any sort of shot at gold.

But feared?

Not really.

For example, Dillon Brooks set a scoring record against the US with 39 points in that bronze medal game. Dillon Brooks??

Before the warm-up match last week he said: "I take it as another game, but me being who I am, I like to make a statement. So I’ll be ready to play. Team Canada will be ready to play, and we’re going to go balls to the wall and watch the film after and see if we got better.”

Well they lost and while the US still looked like a team searching for sync, Steph Curry was sticking triples, Anthony Davis and Jrue Holiday locking up and scoring at the other end, Anthony Edwards a blur of activity.

In fact it was its second unit of Davis, Edwards, Jayson Tatum, Bam Adebayo and Tyrese Haliburton who powered the team to its first victory,

Canada never looked a real chance, but then 40-50 points was out of the question too.

The 1992 USA side in Barcelona, the first time NBA players were allowed to compete in the Olympic Games, saw the "Dream Team" go 8-0 to win gold by an average winning margin of 43.75 points.

That was the stand-out of any Olympic Games and showed how far ahead of the world the professional Americans remained.

But were they that far ahead considering what occurred 32 years earlier?

The USA in 1960 at the Rome Olympic Games, suiting a team made up only of college and AAU players - but obviously a few great ones such as Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, Walt Bellamy, Jerry Lucas, with notable omissions such as John Havlicek and Lenny Wilkens - won gold going 8-0 and winning by an average of 42.38 points.

Coached by one of the greats of the game, Pete Newell, a case can be made the US were further ahead of the rest of the world back then, considering the team largely comprised 20 and 22-year-olds!

They didn't even have colour photography yet!

So there's work ahead for this US team before we can buy the hype this is their "greatest ever national team".

Australia's form in pre-tournament matches against the USA has been fairly positive of late but there is much yet for coach Brian Goorjian to sort out before anyone talks about medals.

Can the Boomers afford to start Josh Giddey and Patty Mills together? Their defensive shortcomings as a combination brutally were exposed at the World Cup. 

Did Goorj give Giddey the keys prematurely last year?

Too bad now, that's what happened, so if the warrior Mills goes to the bench, does that open the door for Dante Exum and Josh Green to start, along with Duop Reath and Jock Landale?

How badly will the team miss the one real shock omission, Matisse Thybulle? Good enough to start in what proved Australia's most significant international match of all time in Tokyo three years ago, this time around he is the notable absentee.

What will the rotations look like? 

It will be tough not to read too much into this, given the pool Australia has in Paris, with Canada, Spain and Greece.

The match with the US will be televised on ESPN/Fox from 2am AEST, Durant still questionable to suit.