RIO DE JANEIRO-The United States reaffirmed their status as gold medal favourites blowing away Argentina 105-78 on Wednesday to storm into the semi-finals of the Olympic men’s basketball tournament.
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The glaring accomplishment missing from Spain’s basketball resume is an Olympic gold medal.
Sure enough, the USA was down 10 early, but in the end crushed Argentina 105-79, ensuring the Golden Generation would finish with just one gold. While the offense still didn’t look great, America’s defense was stellar.
The Argentines win, or say goodbye to their Golden Generation.
National Basketball Association veteran Luis Scola led Argentina with 15 points and 10 rebounds and Manu Ginobili made an emotional farewell with 14 points.
But once play began, the USA rarely played up to those expectations, with one narrow victory after another as the competition toughened. “It was our fifth game, we played 48 hours ago, two overtimes”. Their exits were bittersweet, as both of their squads crashed hard in the Olympic quarterfinals, Argentina losing to a revived US team and France to a resurgent Spain.
Collectively, the US started the game ice-cold, shooting just 1-of-8 from three.
In his first Olympic games, Garino (23 years old) finished with 6.3 points, 3.2 rebounds and 1.0 steals in 24.8 minutes through six games for Argentina.
Nobody is doing that now.
“It has been an incredible era”, said Ginobili, 39, who received extended congratulations from the USA’s Carmelo Anthony and coach Mike Krzyzewski after the game.
“There’s a lot of movement”, Durant said of Spain.
As for his breakout performance, Durant said, “When I got the ball I looked to be aggressive”. “It was much better execution for us”, he said.
“It’s just one game, anything can happen”.
“We tend to think this is gonna be a little easier than we thought”, he continued.
Team USA went on a 27-2 run after falling behind by 10, and that was basically that.
Now they have to stay there two more games. They put a lot of pressure on you because of the way they can shoot the three. Argentina is playing with same four players that were there during 2004, but U.S. isn’t the same team that trounced in battle in Beijing and London. Scola in particular was a key part in helping Argentina jump out to their 19-9 lead.
They were finally in top form Wednesday.
Australia’s best Olympic finish is fourth, losing bronze medal games to the United States of America in 1988 and Lithuania in 1996 and 2000. “I felt at home, I felt at ease, I felt very comfortable over there”. “That was a moment where we expected to kind of be at”.
“We haven’t gotten the recognition on the world stage because we haven’t won anything”.
United States of America never lost any Olympics since 2004, but they lost to Argentine squad that claimed their gold medal in Athens in 2004. They’d medal again in 2008 with a bronze medal and just missed out on a second straight bronze in 2012 by finishing fourth in London. But the players seemed confident.
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“What a remarkable run by Argentina, and so we knew we had to match that energy tonight”.
