USA Basketball wins Olympic opener -- and then talks about it
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Dwyane Wade led the Americans with 19 points, LeBron James added 18 points, and the U.S. beat China, 101-70, in the Beijing Games basketball Olympic opener on Sunday. Kobe Bryant finished with 13 points.
Los Angeles Times writer Mark Heisler has a nice game story from Beijing. And here are some quotes relayed after the game by USA Basketball:
LeBron James (Cleveland Cavaliers)
Q: Was it worth the Olympic buildup?
A: This is something we’ve been waiting for. It took us awhile to finally get to this first game and for it to be against China, it made it that much better.
The anticipation for this game was an all-time high. We were happy that we were able to play well and get a win.
Q: Are you concerned about the U.S. shooting poorly from beyond the three-point line?
A: I’m not concerned. We just have to knock down shots. We had open looks and individually we’re not used to getting open looks like that. But we have to knock them down. It’s as simple as that.
We did a better job in the second half. In the first half we rushed a few and didn’t knock them down.
Q: How about Yao Ming’s performance?
A: He did pretty well. For how much pressure that he has on his back to represent his country, to represent his team, he played extremely well.
Q: Did you expect the crowd to be cheering for you like they were?
A: We didn’t know what to expect. We just knew that the fans were going to be very excited for the game of basketball. We didn’t think about the cheers, we just thought about coming out here and playing well.
Carmelo Anthony (Denver Nuggets)
Q: Can you compare/contrast this game and your first Olympics game at the 2004 Athens Games?
A: We lost by like 40 that first game, we were down the whole game. Puerto Rico had their fans out there but it was totally different this year. We had the Chinese fans with us, we had the USA fans with us and I’m pretty sure we had a couple of other countries out there cheering for us.
Q: Why do you think that is?
A: I think basketball has become so global right now. They watch us day in and day out on TV and they can say that ‘I’m a big fan of Carmelo Anthony or Kobe or LeBron, D-Wade.’ And to see all of us out there on the court at the same time is exciting.
Q: What needs improvement?
A: My poor shooting of the basketball. Me and as a team, we can do better. In the first half I think we shot like 1% from the 3-point line or something like that.
But games are going to happen like that. There are going to be nights where we don’t shoot the 3-point, but we’re gonna have to do everything to win the gold.
-- Greg Johnson
Photo (top): LeBron James. Credit: USOC
Photo (bottom): Carmelo Anthony. Credit: USOC