Team USA men's basketball concluded its exhibition schedule Tuesday, as they easily defeated Spain 100-78 in Barcelona. The victory helped USA finish its warm-up tour with a perfect 5-0 record, and according to its assistant head coach Jim Boeheim, so far, its been a lot of fun:
Sometime during the third quarter on Tuesday night, Kobe Bryant came back to our bench and said, "This is fun."
And you know something? He was right. This is fun. This is a fun team to coach. And this is a fun team to watch.
Boeheim, who's real job is to serve as the head coach of Syracuse University men's basketball, is serving as an assistant for USA's head coach Mike Krzyzewski. This is the second Olympics in a row Boeheim is helping out his friend.
In the win over second-ranked Spain, it was Boeheim's former player, Carmelo Anthony, who netted 23 of his team-high 27 in the first half, that helped Team USA comeback from an early deficit. In the end, said Boeheim, it was a solid victory:
But it was a good win, too, because of the way we won. We had to come from behind against one of the best teams in the world with players like Pau Gasol (19 points) and Serge Ibaka (16 points) out there. It was also a good win because they got 30 free throws and we got only 15. But that’s international ball. That’s pretty normal. We’re going to have some bad calls go against us in the Olympics and we have to be ready to overcome them.
Jim Boehiem is documenting his Team USA experience with a blog at the Syracuse Post-Standard.
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