NBA, Team News / Analysis, Dream Team
Coach K has called off practice today for the US Men’s Olympic Team and for good reason. Last night, the U.S. obliterated Nigeria 156-73. The 83 point victory was a single-game Olympic scoring record. Additionally, Carmelo Anthony set his own Olympic record with 37 points, including ten 3-pointers. He scored 19 points in a 5-minute stretch and scored all of his 37 points in a total span of 14-minutes.
Stephon Marbury had the previous U.S. Olympic high with 31 points vs. Spain in the quarter finals in Athens.
On his 37 point night Melo said, "It's hard to explain. If you've never done it you would never know what I’m talking about it."
When Coach K was asked if the U.S. intentionally ran up the score on Nigeria, he replied,
"Obviously the first thing we did was not play LeBron and Kobe in the second half. The second thing was, even with Carmelo shooting like that (10-of-12 from three-point range), we benched him. We didn’t play Durant. We didn’t take any fast breaks in the fourth quarter, and we played all zone. You have to take a shot every 24 seconds, and the shots we took happened to be hit."
For the past ten years, there’s been a lot of talk about the rest of the world catching up to the U.S. The truth of the matter is, it was really only 2 or 3 teams at the most. But this current U.S. Team is reminding the world once again that they have a long ways to go. Just ask Nigeria.
