USA Basketball to host family of fallen military at games

The opponent will be Argentina, a veteran team that boasts National Basketball Association talent and has earned medals in two of the last three Olympic games.

This year’s model of the men’s squad doesn’t feature quite as many household names, with LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, Anthony Davis, Blake Griffin, James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Kawhi Leonard and LaMarcus Aldridge all opting out of this year’s Olympic Games for one reason or another.

The games are sponsored by Verizon and will not have any commercials like the National Basketball Association broadcast.

On Monday afternoon, the Twitter account of Nike Basketball was among the first to post the official photo of the USA men’s Olympic basketball team. During that time, they will show studio segments and features on United States basketball. You can watch it on NBA TV at 9 p.m. ET or stream it on NBA TV’s Facebook page. In order to watch on NBATV.com, though, you need to authenticate, which means logging in to prove you pay for a cable package that includes NBA TV.

There will be games streaming throughout the next week, with last of the games coming on August 1 when the U.S. Men’s team takes on Nigeria in its final tuneup before heading off to Rio.

The games are also being televised on NBA TV, but the move is a significant first for Facebook as live sports move to digital and social media. The events will also include members of the 1996 Diving Team from the Atlanta Olympics.

The Olympic games will not be streamed on Facebook but this may serve as a trial for future regular season games.

What’s interesting here is that the deal comes just two days after Twitter announced a deal with the National Basketball Association, with the league agreeing to produce two TV-style programs exclusively for the network.

Similar to Twitter, the addition of live games is a boost for Facebook’s budding live streaming endeavors.