Anthony, who finished with a game-high 31 points on 11-of-21 shooting, hit three three-pointers in a little more than two minutes midway through the fourth quarter to put the Americans up 83-76 with 5:32 remaining.
Advertisement
“Australia have probably played the best of anybody in the Olympics… they just play lights-out basketball”.
“Of course I was conscious of it”, Anthony said of the scoring mark. “We have a lot of faith in him”.
They’re out: Defending champion Mexico was eliminated from the men’s soccer tournament after 1-0 loss to South Korea.
Team USA Basketball now has one final preliminary game on Friday against Serbia before entering the knockout stage in the second week of the Rio Olympics.
Ex-Boomer Shane Heal said the game proved Australia was a genuine medal contender. We did OK for a bit, but there were times when we had some mental lapses, where we got sucked into the ball when we didn’t need to and he got some open 3s.
“We had a rough start”, Parker said. At half-time, Twitter was agog over the possibility that the United States team could lose.
“We thought we could compete with these guys and in the first half we showed that”, said Matthew Dellavedova, who helped the Cleveland Cavaliers win the National Basketball Association title in June. That’s an attitude change. “We knew we could play with anyone coming in”. He scored 26 against the Americans at the London Olympics 2012 and 20 at Beijing in 2008.
“If he doesn’t make the shots he make we lose tonight”, forward Paul George said.
The battle of the last winless men’s basketball teams in Group A went down to the wire as Venezuela squeaked past China 72-68 Wednesday night to take another step toward advancing.
“That was a heck of a team we beat”.
Patty Mills scored 30 points for Australia.
A 10-2 U.S. run in response featured eight points from Anthony and produced an 80-74 edge.
“Melo initiated it to put this game away”, George said.
An Andersen three under pressure from the top of the arc then tied the scores for the fifth time in the game before an Ingles lay-in orchestrated the seventh lead change.
“His commitment to United States of America basketball, global basketball, he’s one of the best players in the world, but over the past decade, he’s proven to be one of the best worldwide players in the world, so congratulations to him”. Afterward, nearly everyone connected to the USA program tried to take a positive out of it, saying a close game will prove good for the team as it chases the gold.
It was a physical contest, with Jordan getting a technical foul, Kyle Lowry picking up an unsportsmanlike one and Draymond Green tripping Mills as he accelerated for a fast break hoop.
Advertisement
Andersen was a critical in testing the swinging United States zone defence with 10 first-half points.
