United States time will enter the Rio court with fresh squad counting Kyrie Irving, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson joining hands with returning squad Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant.
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Durant picked up right where he left off in the 2012 Olympics with 25 points, and the Americans routed China in their opening game.
The new Golden State Warriors star scored 30 points four years ago in the gold-medal game, when the Americans held off Spain.
Durant scored eight points in the first quarter and Carmelo Anthony added eight as the US jumped out to a 30-10 lead after the first quarter, capped by Jimmy Butler’s fast break reverse layin at the buzzer.
DeMarcus Cousins scored 17 points and Paul George added 15 for the U.S. Former NBA player Yi Jianlian led China with 25 points.
The Americans’ next opponent, Monday’s matchup with Venezuela, doesn’t figure to be much more of a challenge than this. To prepare for the group stages, the U.S. National Team played five exhibition matches against four different countries (competing against China twice). He’ll become the first three-time men’s basketball gold medalist if the U.S. win gold at the end of this tournament.
Team USA begins its first quest for another Olympic basketball gold medal when it takes on China on Saturday in Group A, Round 1 action. They were still stuck at two points three minutes into the game, plagued by missed jumpers and a team-wide penchant for overpassing.
Team USA continued to cruise in the second half, locking down Venezuela on defense and keeping their offense free flowing, extending the lead to 30-plus and then 40-plus points. [So] we settled down and made our adjustments to the way that they was calling the game, to the way that Venezuela wanted to play.
Anthony moved past Michael Jordan on the US career scoring list and now only trails LeBron James and David Robinson.
The Americans had 31 assists on their 38 baskets.
“It’s one game down, we’ve got seven more to go to get a gold”, Durant said.
The second game, played on July 27, gave a preview of what could be another dominant Olympics performance from Carmelo Anthony, CBS Sports noted. Anthony scored 20 points in the game the USA won handily against China-107-57. China kept it close in the first few minutes, scoring the first basket of the game to lead 2-0 as the USA got warmed up.
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“I felt good, I kind of was surprised that I did”, Bogut said.
