The first American male basketball player to appear in four Olympics, Anthony passed LeBron James on the career scoring list during Wednesday’s game against Australia.
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Australia may have two heartbreaking losses in the ongoing Rio 2016 Olympics in cycling and basketball, but the 10-point lead in the Boomers’ game versus Team USA caused a Twitter meltdown on Wednesday night.
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.
The Boomers were right in it until there was a minute left to play.
Tina Charles, who finished with 15 points, got going in the second quarter to help the US extend the advantage to 22 at the half.
In the first-half, the Aussies led by as many as eight points before going down as Team USA finished strongly.
“We kind of expected a game like this, a physical game, a grind-out game”, Anthony said. While there were two other games on the docket, there’s no getting around the fact that the main event of the day’s action was Team USA playing.
Both teams will come out of this game feeling pretty good, the Americans for having handled their first bit of adversity well, and the Australians for having shown they have what it takes to vie for an Olympic medal.
Hero: Anthony not only had a game-high 31 points but was diving on the floor for loose balls and leading by example.
This was supposed to be another romp in the park for the collection of National Basketball Association stars that is the U.S. Olympic team. He beat his own record for the most points an Australian has scored against the USA Team.
A common trend from Wednesday was Team USA not being able to stop the balanced Aussie attack on the offensive end. Too often – especially as the game wore on and fatigue set in – the Australian defense left him with uncontested threes.
The Aussies led by two points early in the final quarter and the United States had to pull out all stops to get the job done, led by veteran Carmelo Anthony who had 31 points including nine 3-point shots. “He’s special. We don’t get this without him”. “He obviously played well, he is a quality player”.
“I think we put on a decent performance but there’s a lot of things to clean up”. “It was an adjustment for us”.
The Boomers got a healthy cheer as they ran onto the court but there was an enormous roar when their megastar rivals appeared.
“I mean Australia has probably played the best of anybody in the Olympics”.
Colmenares led the team with 16 points, five rebounds and four assists.
“I was in my zone”, Anthony said. I can space out, take my time, pick my spots, play off of the guys I have on my team. And Australia tested them early. “We played them in Turkey in 2014 and it was our toughest game at the world championship”, Taurasi said.
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Next up for the Americans is Friday’s matchup against Serbia at 5 p.m. EST on NBC.
