Geoff JohnsonUSA and Spain will square in a “friendly” match at Barcelona in what could be the Gold Medal game at the end of the basketball tournament in London 2012. The game will be this Tuesday at 4:30 PM ET at Palau Sant Jordi at Barcelona.
The US team beat Argentina with lots of problems 86-80 on Sunday; meanwhile Spain smashed Argentina 105-85 a few days earlier. “They’re immensely talented,” Luis Scola said about the USA Team. “They’ve got a lot of players in every position. They’re too athletic; they’re too talented. I think they’re going to be OK.”
Critics are talking about how the USA team is going to have problems against discipline squads, with good players inside the pain.
“At the end of the day, as long as you win the basketball game. That’s what we were talking about at halftime,” Carmelo Anthony said. “We try to come out and put teams away right away, and sometimes it’s not going to be that way, like tonight. It just wasn’t one of those games.”
“It’s tough. Argentina’s a very good team, very tough-minded,” Kobe Bryant said. “They continue to play hard, and for us, it was a big challenge to try to put the game away, we could just never do it.”
If Bryant is concern about what Argentina showed, wait to see what Spain can do. The Gasol brothers along with Sergi Ibaka inside the paint could be a hard enough force to beat by the Americans.
The betting lines have the US favorite by -11.5 points. The game total is set at 170.5.
