Anthony also admitted that he was not anxious about Matthew Dellavedova being in the Australian team.
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Australian teams are 0-19 against the USA, but the full-game test they posed may fuel belief among other teams that the United States squad can be threatened and perhaps denied a third consecutive gold medal. As Coack K said, they’ve played as well as anyone besides Team USA thus far. They play as one. “We knew what kind of situation we were coming in to”. As this group moves toward a third consecutive Olympic gold, it needs to figure out how to get stops late in games, how to execute offensively and who – beyond Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant – it can rely on with the game undecided in the final minutes.
Kyrie Irving, who Australians like to claim as their own as he was born in Melbourne, was the second-best player for the USA with 19 points on 7-of-15 shooting, including a dagger from three down the stretch, similar to Game 7 against the Golden State Warriors.
It was a physical contest, Bogut relishing the contest down low with DeAndre Jordan, while defensive dynamo Dellavedova also orchestrated Australia’s attack. By the end of the third quarter though the U.S. had moved out to a narrow 70-67 lead.
Despite starting from the bench, he still played starter minutes thanks to tough defense on Australia’s National Basketball Association guards Matthew Dellavedova and Patty Mills. Something coach Andrej Lemanis will no doubt be enthused by.
But Anthony, the first USA male to play in four Olympics, steadied the Americans in the first competitive game most of this new team had ever experienced. The last USA loss at the Olympics was in the 2004 semi-finals to Argentina, sparking a revamped team guided by “Coach K”.
Taurasi scored 16 in the first quarter and hit five 3s in the first half, and the Americans (3-0) needed her scoring.
The Americans wins over China and Venezuela were ultra-boring.
Patty Mills, the tournament scoring leader, had 30 points for Australia.
Anthony finished the game with a total of 31 points and eight rebounds, sinking nine of his 15 attempts from beyond the arc.
“Any time you can get the best players in the world to chill and connect in a different way, that’s special”, Carmelo Anthony, of the New York Knicks, said. You give this team second-chance points and you have no chance.
“For us I thought it was a heck of a win because we beat a really good team, an outstanding team that was playing really well”.
“We were doing the same stuff they were doing and we got hacked for it”.
Since then, he’s become the first American male in #Basketball to play in four #Olympics, having been part of the US national team in 2004, 2008, 2012, and now, in 2016. I know people are proud of us and were not supposed to beat these guys. but we believe we can beat them and we lost the game..
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They entered tonight’s match in super form after wins over powerhouses Serbia and France in their two opening preliminary matches.
