USA vs. Australia EXHIBITION FULL GAME HIGHLIGHTS JULY 12, 2021 For TOKYO OLYMPICS

These games don’t count. Right now, that is the only saving grace for USA Basketball.Show more

And for quite probably the first time in 29 years of NBA players suiting up for the national team, there was a smattering of boos when a game ended — on home soil, no less.

Patty Mills scored 22 points and Australia held the U.S. without a field goal for the final 4:34 on the way to beating the Americans 91-83 on Monday night, dropping the three-time defending Olympic gold medalists to 0-2 in their five-game slate of exhibitions leading up to the Tokyo Games.

“I thought we got better tonight,” said U.S. coach Gregg Popovich, whose team lost to Nigeria on Saturday. “After a short time together, there’s a lot of things that have to be covered, but the first half and the second half were two different beasts.

The halftime lead was nine, the same lead that the U.S. had early in the third quarter against Nigeria before letting it slip away.

And the same thing happened in this one.

The third-quarter lead for the U.S. was as big as 10 and was 58-50 when Lillard made a 3-pointer midway through the period. But Australia closed the quarter on a 19-6 run, Goulding hit a 3-pointer as time expired and Australia took a 69-64 lead into the final 10 minutes.

“We’ll learn from it,” Popovich said.