On Wednesday night, we got our first official look at what is expected to be a dominant USA Basketball team.

The red white and blue fell down 11-1 to begin the game against Canada who is set to be one of their top challengers, but were able to battle back and win in dominating fashion by a score of 86-72.

“Good first game for us, really just getting started after four days of practice,” said head coach Steve Kerr. “You could see the rust from the offensive end, a lot of turnovers in that first half especially, but I love the defensive intensity and the work on the glass. So it was a good first effort.”

There are always plenty of takeaways from a national team’s first exhibition game and that was no different in the Americans’ win over their rivals in Vegas.

Here are three takeaways from USA Basketball’s 86-72 win over Canada.

1. Anthony Edwards said he was the number one option and he might not be that far off
On a team with Lebron James, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant, it was pretty surprising to hear Anthony Edwards come out and say he’s the team’s number one option.

It’s way to early to officially call Edwards the team’s main guy and that day will probably never come but what we saw out of the Timberwolves superstar on Wednesday suggests that just maybe he wasn’t that far off.

Following Canada’s 11-1 win to open the game, a second unit led by Anthony Edwards came in and turned the game on its head.

Edwards finished with a team-high 13 points propelling the Americans to victory

2. Size Matters
Many of the teams playing in the Paris Olympics won’t have the size to match up with a team like France who features two 7-footers in Rudy Gobert, and Victor Wembanyama…. The US will not be one of them.

When we saw both Anthony Davis and Bam Adebayo, the US made some of their biggest runs of the night.

Davis had the best game of anyone on the team as he totalled 10 points 11 rebounds 4 blocks and 2 steals. Adebayo who played a team-high 21 minutes had 4 points and 7 rebounds.

Not to mention Joel Embiid who fouled out in the third quarter but will be a key factor to the Olympics in Paris.

3 Defense Wins Gold
If we’re putting it frankly, the US wasn’t great on the offensive end of the floor last night. However, the defensive end was a completely different story.

For players as great as the ones that the US has to buy into the defensive end to the extent that they did last night says a lot about how much success this group is going to have.

The US held Canada to just 33.7% from the field and was able to force 11 steals and 9 blocks. Canada is set to be one of the better offensive teams in the world and for the US to be able to hold them to just 72 points is huge.

To sum this one up, the fact that the US beat Canada by 14 points while having the offensive struggles that they did, shows just how good this team is going to be.