For the second straight game, the 39-year-old James delivered late. After making the winning basket against South Sudan, he scored 11 points in the final four minutes Monday to outlast a German team that beat the United States in the semifinals of last year’s FIBA World Cup.

“For us, all these [exhibition] games have been real,” James told reporters. “We don’t have much time to lose an opportunity to get better. We’ve only been together for a couple weeks now. Each one of these games was an opportunity for us to improve, and I think we did that.”

James, who finished with a game-high 20 points to go with six rebounds and four assists, was in takeover mode down the stretch. During the decisive sequence, he cut through the paint for a left-handed layup, hustled back on defense for a steal and then bullied his way through two defenders for another layup. That gave the Americans an 85-82 lead with 3:40 to play, and they did not trail the rest of the way.

Germany, which was led by NBA players Dennis Schröder, Franz Wagner and Daniel Theis, erased a 48-41 halftime deficit and gave itself a chance to pull off the upset by outscoring the United States 30-20 in the third quarter. Schröder blocked a Stephen Curry shot and threw a lob to Theis to cut the Americans’ lead to 87-86 with 90 seconds left, but James put the finishing touches on a tense victory by hitting a three-pointer from the right wing and bulldozing to the rim for another contested basket.

Wagner scored a team-high 18 points for Germany. Schröder added 13 points and 10 assists.

“I thought the third quarter we played our best basketball and played with good tempo,” Germany Coach Gordon Herbert said. “And, yeah, somebody named LeBron James made some pretty good plays at the end.”

The Americans, who also survived a close call against Australia during their exhibition run, will open group-stage play against Serbia on Sunday. To win their fifth straight gold medal, the Americans must advance out of their four-team group in the opening round of the 12-team tournament and then win three consecutive games in the knockout round.

Though their exhibition run included convincing wins over Canada and Serbia, the Americans hardly maintained a “Dream Team”-like dominance over the competition. Germany limited the United States to 6-for-16 shooting (37.5 percent) on three-pointers and held the likes of Curry, Joel Embiid and Anthony Edwards in check. If not for James’s physical drives to the hoop, the Americans’ struggles to properly space the court and to keep the ball moving without committing turnovers would have been their undoing.

Defensively, Embiid has struggled to cover ground against competitors that deploy spacing big men, and the Americans were fortunate the Germans shot 11 for 42 (26.2 percent) from deep. With more efficient nights from guards Schröder and Andreas Obst, Germany could have duplicated its impressive World Cup win.

In addition to a sometimes stagnant offense and an inconsistent defense, U.S. Coach Steve Kerr must deal with one other complication: Kevin Durant’s health. The three-time gold medalist sat out training camp and all five exhibition games with what Kerr has called a minor calf injury, and his return would almost certainly force major changes to the Americans’ rotation.

“Having coached him in Golden State, when he missed time, he came right back and he is who he is,” Kerr said. “He’s one of the most skilled players of all time. We hope he comes back soon, and I think he’ll fit right in.”