US men’s basketball team gets tested, beats Australia 98-88

In fact, for much of Wednesday’s preliminary game against Australia, Team USA appeared to be in real danger of suffering its first Olympic loss in 20 outings.

Team USA was surprised with the performance of Team Australia in the 2016 Rio Olympics men’s basketball tournament on Wednesday night.

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 global career.

I was obviously rooting for our guys, but I love to watch my man Patty Mills play basketball. “My teammates found me when I was open”. The game was tied at 29 at the end of the first quarter, and Australia led by five points at halftime.

“They play inside-out, they share the ball, they run, they protect the rim well, they’re physical”, Thibodeau said.

George never found the rhythm that allowed him to shoot 6 of 7 and score 20 points in the U.S. win over Venezuela.

Along the way, Anthony overtook LeBron James as Team USA’s all-time leading scorer. “We’re disappointed, we lost”.

No one had thought the United States could lose in this tournament.

We should be proud of our surprisingly-dominant Olympic start, but we should also be realistic about it.

Whatever happens today, this will very likely be a better game than either for the first two so it’s worth tuning in to see how well Australia competes. That’s an attitude change. We’re not going to back down to anyone.

The Aussies lost to the Americans in the 2008 and 2012 Olympic quarter-finals but have four National Basketball Association champion players and had talked of pulling off an upset.

The defensive intensity of the game threatened to boil over after some bruising collisions, but United States of America forward Paul George said his team was expecting the brutal battle with the Aussies.

In the second quarter, coach Andrej Lemanis went to his bench and they provided the goods.

The USA is fighting for their third straight Olympic gold medal this Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. We have things to work on and we will do that, ‘ Bogut said.

“We knew that coming in – this team has a knack for being a little dirty”. Anthony scored to tie it, hit a 3-pointer to give the USA the lead for good, and then hit two more 3s that pushed it to 83-76. He recorded 14 points in the win and gave the team a huge lift off the bench to get them going before the half.

“He was definitely special”, George said of Anthony.

The Aussies stayed hot on the US NBA stars’ heels but came no closer than four points after that, thanks in large part to Anthony.