Powell started Wednesday night’s exhibition against Joel Embiid and Team USA

Team USA and Team Canada faced off on Wednesday night in a friendly exhibition before the Olympics. USA has a star-studded lineup, as always, but Canada came with a solid squad themselves, featuring a superstar guard duo of Jamal Murray and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

Starting at the center for Canada this exhibition was Dallas Mavericks forward Dwight Powell. Powell only played in 13 of the Mavs’ 22 playoff games and averaged just over three minutes per game.

In this exhibition, Powell was held scoreless on just two shot attempts, both three-pointers, but held former MVP Joel Embiid to just 5 points before fouling out. Powell did have three assists and two rebounds in his 15 minutes.

Team USA would go on to win 86-72 despite Team Canada roaring out to a big lead to start the exhibition. Powell started ahead of other bigs such as Kelly Olynyk and Trey Lyles, which could be a point of weakness if they were to go up against a team like France that has Rudy Gobert and Victor Wembanyama.

Powell is one of only two Mavericks playing in the Olympics this year, along with Dante Exum on the Australian national team. Luka Doncic and his home country of Slovenia failed to qualify this year and Josh Green, who is also on the Australian team, was traded to Charlotte. Maxi Kleber is not competing with the German national team as he heals from the season.

The Boston Celtics clinched their 18th title in franchise history on their home floor last month when the team defeated the Dallas Mavericks in Game 5 of the 2024 NBA Finals. But Jayson Tatum recently claimed that he would have rather seen Boston win the title in Game 4 of the series, which took place in Dallas.

Heading into Game 4, Boston held a commanding 3-0 series lead and had a shot to be the first team to win the NBA Finals in a sweep since the Golden State Warriors did so in the 2018 championship series.

“I would’ve preferred to win on the road, honestly,” Tatum said while looking back on winning his first NBA title. “Just ‘cause I know what it felt like for somebody to win a championship on my home court. I wanted that get back. Like, I wanted to win in Dallas because I know — I’ve seen the [Golden State] Warriors celebrate on our home court. And that s— was devastating.”

But Tatum and the Celtics suffered one of the most lopsided losses in the history of the NBA Finals in Game 4. Boston lost by a whopping 38 points and shot just 36.3 percent from the field and 34.1 percent from 3-point range as a team.

Tatum led the team in scoring in the losing effort, but he dropped just 15 points on 4-of-10 shooting from the field and 1-of-4 from deep.