The 2016 Rio Olympic men’s basketball tournament began Saturday and the games started out with a bang, as Australia upset France 87-66, a blowout not many saw coming.
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MELO: TEAM WILL MOVE ON AFTER REPORTS ON BROTHEL VISIT: Anthony says his US men’s basketball teammates need to accept responsibility and move on after reports that three players visited a legal brothel in Rio de Janeiro. It started the first day and there’s no let up so when we go to our bench there’s is no drop off.
“I think the Americans’ last five players would be better than any other team’s starting five”. Playing hellacious defense and taking better care of the ball, Team USA closed the second quarter on a 24-4 run to go into the half up 48-26. They cruised from there, improving to 82-1 under coach Mike Krzyzewski and reminding everyone it’s going to take a special performance for 40 minutes to deny them another Olympic title.
“I like the fact”, Coach K continued, “that we don’t play the score”. “We know that, even with this great team”.
During the first quarter against China, Cleveland point guard Kyrie Irving poked the ball away before diving headfirst on the floor trying to come up with the steal.
“Their defense is so good”, says worldwide hoops veteran John Cox, star of the Venezuelan team that next must face the suffocation head-on Monday night in the teams’ second Group A date.
Anthony could be the all-time leader by Wednesday, when the Americans face an Australia team that is also undefeated. At this point, there’s no discerning just how much the USA will be tested in the medal rounds and no wondering how this squad measures up with Olympic teams of the past. They could easily have phoned it in but they continued to try to play their game throughout, running their sets consistently and trying new plays out of timeouts even when the game had already been out of reach for quite some time. “For as little time as we had together, we do a lot of really nice things out there which is nice to see”. Durant and Anthony are the only two holdovers from the gold medal team from four years ago.
Both USA teams haves kicked off this tournament by unleashing their superstar power. Three minutes later, American Katie Reinprecht slipped one under the goalkeeper to give the USA a 1-0 lead.
Anthony moved past Michael Jordan on the career scoring list and now only trails LeBron James and David Robinson for the most points by an American Olympian.
“I felt like I didn’t get enough photos”, Barnes said.
When a helpful reporter followed up by suggesting that the Americans had to have registered at least an “8 and a half” with the way they tormented China in a 119-62 rout, Thibodeau shot back: “I wish I had a professor in school like you”. Shaking off repeated frustration on the sport’s biggest stage, Katinka Hosszu of Hungary crushed the world record in the women’s 400 individual medley to make the first Olympic medal of her career gold.
John Cox, Kobe Bryant’s cousin, led Venezuela with 19 points, although he shot 6-of-20 from the field.
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That unit has all the firepower that one could ask for in an All-Star game but, it seems insane for one country to have all that talent. The Frenchmen also had five National Basketball Association players on the roster.
