Rio-Cap: USA 119, China 62 (or, Next Time We’ll Spot You 50)

Team USA’s fairly inevitable march to the Gold Medal in men’s basketball got off to a relatively ho-hum start against the extremely overmatched Chinese national team on Saturday afternoon in Rio De Janiero’s Carioca Arena. After missing their first five shots of the game, the boys in blue didn’t miss much else, as they used a series of runs and some suffocating defense to nearly double up the guys in red and white by the end.

Every player on the US side scored, and they were led by Kevin Durant’s game high 25 points on 10-14 shooting (including 5-8 from downtown), to go with four rebounds and six assists. DeMarcus Cousins chipped in 17 points, and Paul George had 15 off the bench. Kyrie Irving got the start at PG, and though he didn’t score in the first half, he went on a three point binge in the third quarter (knocking down 4-5, including three in a row) to wind up with 12 points to go with five assists.

Here’s his fourth triple… a pull-up heat check…

https://vine.co/v/5qTmpH3tUtB

Overall, Team USA also nearly doubled up Team China in rebounds (52-29) and assists (31-16) as well as points. The lone bright spot for the Chinese (who are one of only two teams that don’t feature a current NBA player) was Yi Jianlian, who scored 25 points (none of his teammates made it to double digits). Yi did play three seasons in the NBA, and was the No. 6 pick in the 2007 NBA draft, four spots behind KD.

Up next for the stars and stripes steamroller… a Monday matchup with Team Venezuela (the other team without an NBA star since Nets guard Greivis Vasquez is out with an injury). Venezuela played the US team the closest during their five game exhibition tour, but that was still a 35-point blowout in Chicago that led coach Nestor Garcia to remark: “We don’t have a chance at this level.”

As for those who do have a chance… though it was widely thought that France might have the best shot at making things competitive with the US going into the Olympics (given their wealth of NBA talent including Tony Parker, Nic Batum, Rudy Gobert, Boris Diaw and Nando de Colo), they were routed by the surprising Australian team today, 87-66. With Patty Mills, Andrew Bogut, Aaron Baynes and old friend Matthew Dellavedova leading the way (Delly had a game high 10 assists), the Aussies might just be the new underdog to watch out for this week.

Looks like we’ll get an early look at the Uncle Drew v. Wombat faceoff on Wednesday night in Game 3 of the Preliminary round…