Americans get their first test

Carmelo Anthony will likely go down as Team USA’s greatest basketball star.

Banged about and taken out of their game, the USA had to rally in the fourth quarter to salvage a 98-88 win that was even closer than the score indicated.

San Antonio Spurs guard Patty Mills and the Australian Men’s National Basketball team suffered their first loss at the 2016 Rio games Wednesday, after putting pressure on the United States Men’s National Basketball team for a majority of the game, but eventually, the USA made more tough shots down the stretch to win the match 98-88. “That’s the only way a team is going to get us out of our comfort zone is to muddy the game, doing little stuff to get to us”.

It still hasn’t sunk in that we’ve done that, especially as we didn’t really, but we pretty much did.

The first American male basketball player to appear in four Olympics, Anthony also passed LeBron James as the most prolific scorer to ever wear a United States of America jersey.

For the Dream Team, Carmelo Anthony cashed in with 31 points while Dellavedova’s Cleveland Cavaliers teammate Kyrie Irving scored 19 and Kevin Durant had 13. In fact, the US trailed the Australians at the start of the fourth quarter until Anthony knocked down a flurry of threes.

Patty Mills led Australia with 30 points, and Dellavedova tallied 11 assists.

After five easy exhibitions preceding routs of China and Venezuela to open the tournament, the Americans trailed 72-70 with about 9 minutes left. He finished with 31 points, making nine of his 15 three-point attempts and grabbing eight rebounds in the win against Australia, giving his team a 3-0 record to start the tournament.

The U.S. scored the final five points in the last 27 seconds on free throws, with Irving hitting the first three.

The Australians, ousted by the Americans in the 2008 and 2012 Olympic quarter-finals, have four players who won National Basketball Association titles and had talked of pulling off an upset. “We lost”, star Aussie center Andrew Bogut said.

Australia opened with impressive victories over France and Serbia, both ranked among the top six in the world.

“Most athletes don’t have an opportunity to say that they won a gold medal, better yet three gold medals”, Anthony said.

The Americans have now won 71 consecutive games in all, 48 in FIBA and FIBA Americas competition.

“It’s pretty obvious why it’s good for us”, said coach Mike Krzyzewski, who screamed at an official after Bogut’s hard foul on Irving in the third quarter.

This night that looked for a while to be nothing more than a novelty – the New York Knicks star passing LeBron James as the all-time American leading scorer in American Olympics history en route to an expected win – eventually became one of Anthony’s most memorable performances in his decorated worldwide career.

But no other USA players had much going, with Durant going 2 for 10 in the first half and Irving 2 for 7. “We’re going to have to do a better job matching them”.