U.S. men hammer Argentina, 126-97

LONDON (AP) — Excused to leave the postgame news con­fer­ence, Chris Paul said thank you, walked to the end of the dais, lost his bal­ance and nearly fell.

He stayed on his feet. Dis­as­ter averted.

“Don’t get hurt,” Amer­i­can coach Mike Krzyzewski said, relieved to see his start­ing point guard was OK.

The Amer­i­cans are fine, too.

They haven’t had a major mis­step in this tour­na­ment. They can’t afford one now.

Not three wins from Olympic gold.

Drain­ing five 3-pointers, one deeper than the next, Kevin Durant scored 17 points in the third quar­ter and fin­ished with 28 as the U.S. men’s team made a defense-be-damned state­ment before enter­ing the medal round with a 126–97 win over pesky rival Argentina on Mon-day night.

With their fourth blowout in five games, the Amer­i­cans (5–0) moved into the quar­ter­fi­nals, where they’ll meet Aus­tralia (3–2) on Wed-nesday night and pro­claimed that if any­one is to beat them in the days ahead they’re going to have to out­shoot these run-and-gunslingers from the U.S.

Two games after Car-melo Anthony’s record-setting per­for­mance, it was Durant’s turn to put on a show. Once Durant got hot, there was noth­ing Argentina could do.

“Any­body in their right mind, when he gets shoot­ing the ball like that, there’s only one thing to do: Get the ball to him,” Paul said. “Luck­ily, we have a team that has the pres­ence of mind to get it to him. He’s unbe­liev­able. We have to yell at him to shoot the ball and as you see, he usu­ally makes it.”

Lead­ing by just one at half­time, the U.S. outscored Argentina (3–2) 42–17 in the third quar­ter, which began with LeBron James flex­ing his mus­cles inside.

James scored seven quick points, forc­ing the Argen­tines to play defense a lit­tle closer to the bas­ket. They moved and Durant made them pay.

He hit con­sec­u­tive 3s to make it 85–66, send­ing cen­ter Tyson Chan­dler high-stepping from the U.S. bench toward the base­line and mak­ing Andre Iguo­dala belly flop to the floor. Moments later, Durant was at it again, hit­ting two more long-range shots in suc­ces­sion, the sec­ond one seem­ingly from Pic­cadilly Circus.

“Once I caught it and shot it, it just felt good,” Durant said. “I was in rhythm. I really didn’t pay atten­tion to where the line was. When I caught that ball, I was going to shoot it. It was a great pass and I’m glad I made it.”

The U.S. only had one tough game, beat­ing Lithua­nia 99–94, a close call that seemed to awaken the Amer­i­cans after routs of France, Tunisia and the his­toric, 156-point anni­hi­la­tion of Nigeria.

In pool play, there was a mar­gin for error.

It’s gone, and Durant said the Amer­i­cans know they aren’t invincible.

“We can be beat if we don’t come out and play the way we’re sup­posed to play,” he said. “You’ve got to always turn it on, you can’t just turn it on in the third quar­ter. We have to be focused and ready.”

In the other quar­ter­fi­nals, Rus­sia, which lost for the first time in the tour­na­ment when Austalia’s Patty Mills made a 3-pointer as time expired, faces Lithua­nia. Spain plays France in a rematch of the Spaniards’ vic­tory in last year’s Euro­pean cham­pi­onship, and in another rematch from last sum­mer, South Amer­i­can rivals Argentina and Brazil meet.

James added 18 points and Paul 17 for the Amer­i­cans, who were fueled by Argentina’s Facundo Cam­pazzo hit­ting Carmelo Anthony in the groin as he hit a 3-pointer to end the third.

With Anthony buck­led over on the floor, play­ers on both benches pointed fin­gers and jawed at each other.

Cam­pazzo acknowl­edged hit­ting Anthony on pur­pose, and said he did it because Paul had punched him earlier.

Fol­low­ing the game, Kobe Bryant con­fronted Campazzo.

“It was inap­pro­pri­ate,” Bryant said. “I said, ‘you don’t do that’ and he said, ‘I know.’ He knows he’s wrong. That was uncalled for and I let him know. To his credit, he acknowl­edged it. He said, ‘My fault, I know.’ And that was it.”

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Aug 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.