The swarming defense of Team USA limited the effectiveness of China’s best player, Yao Ming, en route to a 121-90 blowout in the preliminary round of the FIBA World Championship.
“We wanted to play better than we did against Puerto Rico,” [Carmelo] Anthony said. “I think we took a huge step forward. We had to be about three times better than we were against Puerto Rico. I think we played better than we did last night. I’m not saying that Puerto Rico was a bad team. For us, we played a lot better than we did last night We knew that China was going to try to make a run.”
Dwayne Wade led the team with 26 points while Dwight Howard and Carmelo Anthony each added 16 points. Howard led all rebounders with 11, while Chris Paul once again led Team USA in assists, dishing out eight dimes in the game.
Team USA plays Slovenia on Tuesday at 6:30 AM on ESPN2. See the entire schedule here.
