It will not always be pretty, but defense will be the key for Team USA as they head to the Beijing Olympics this week where they will seek to redeem themselves after a bronze medal performance in 2004.
In an 89-68 warm up win over rivals Russia on Sunday, the bevy of NBA stars that make up Team USA depended on outside shooting and a stifling defense to beat the reigning European champions.
The Americans, who have won the Olympic basketball championship 12 times, are vying to end an eight-year international drought stretching back to Sydney 2000, with embarrassing flops at Athens and two World Championships along the way.
“Our defense was excellent but on offense we seemed a little bit out of synch,” US coach Mike Krzyzewski said of Sunday’s game. “What I’m really pleased with is it didn’t come easy offensively for us and it never had a negative impact on our defense and to me that’s a really big thing.”
Defensively the team is in sync and all the players are buying into Krzyzewski’s plan to smother the opponent’s every move no matter who that team may be. Next up will be Australia on Tuesday night, in Team USA’s final tune up to the Beijing Games.
On Sunday, the US defense held the Russians to 39 percent shooting from the field and 23 percent from three-point range, while the Americans hit 32 of 56 shots, while going seven for 13 from behind the arch.
“Defensively we continue to play great,” Cleveland Cavalier superstar LeBron James said. “If we hold a team to between 60 and 70 points, for the most part we’re going to win. You know you’re not going to have a game every night where offensively you’re in tune but [the] one thing you can control is defense.”
The game against Russia, who got 18 points and eight rebounds from Utah Jazz star Andrei Kirilenko, was very different to Team USA’s lopsided 120-84 win over Lithuania on Friday last week and the 114-82 roasting of Turkey a day earlier.
On Sunday, the bigger Russians focused on slowing the tempo, hitting the boards and containing the potent US fast break.
“Defense is very important to this team because we’re not going to shoot the ball well every day and we can’t let our offense dictate how the game is going to go,” Toronto Raptor center and defensive guru Chris Bosh said. “We have to let our defense dictate that.”
In the last eight years of international play, Team USA has come out and blown away teams by 30 and 40 points, only to be blind-sided by bad shooting or sloppy play in the medal round where one loss eliminates you from gold medal contention.
“One of the things about this game is that we respect our opponent no matter who it is,” point guard Jason Kidd said.
“We know that each time we take the floor we are trying to get better. And we don’t look to be knocked out, we look to be aggressive and erase the stuff that has happened in the past.”
At the Olympics, Team USA play China on Sunday to kick off a tough Group B that includes reigning world champs Spain, African champions Angola and European powers Greece and Germany.
Russia is in Group A, with reigning Olympic champions Argentina, Lithuania, Croatia, Australia and Iran.
The top four teams in each group advance to the medal round.
“We’ve been looking forward to this for a while, we are very excited about this opportunity,” last season’s NBA most valuable player Kobe Bryant said. “It’s the hard work ... we are on a road to redemption.”
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