MADRID, Spain– U.S. senior national coach Mike Krzyzewski has been pushing humility and respect for the rest of the international competition throughout the FIBA World Cup of Basketball here.
But it appears forward Kenneth Faried skipped the seminar on diplomatic relationships.
The 6-8 Faried, the biggest surprise on the U.S. national team, let its competitive juices flow show after the Americans advanced to the gold medal game here Sunday with a 96-68 victory over Lithuania in their semi-final game at Palu Sant Jordi in Barcelona Thursday night to advance to the gold medal game of this pre-Olympic tournament and Spain was eliminated by France in the quarterfinals here Wednesday night.
The shock waves are still reverberating throughout this country, whose national team had played the U.S. close in each of the past two Olympic games at Beijing and London and had been considered the American’s biggest rival.
Most the world was anticipating a final between the U.S. and Spain, which had rolled through the competition and had nine current or former NBA players on its roster and many coaches, players and members of the media thought Spain would be the favorite, playing in front of a sell out pro Spanish crowd in the Palais Deportes.
Instead, this young U.S. team will play the winner of France and Serbia here Sunday night.
“Everybody was talking about us against Spain,” Faried said. “I don’t know what they’re going to do now. I’m not surprised Spain isn’t here. There was too much hype around them. It was more disreprectful to us,
saying we weren’t going to match up with their bigs, they’re better than us, all that arrogant stuff.
:”I just took it like, ‘Ok, we’ll see what happens in the finals. We’ll see what happens.’ Now, we can’t even see what happens.
“I’m disappointed they lost. I wanted to beat them in their own country.”
Given the way Team USA has played in the second halves of the first seven games is this tournament, it may be unwise to under estimate them. The game against Lithuania was a classic example. Team USA did not shoot well, but they held a 49-42 lead at half. But they just exploded, outscoring Lithuania 33-14 in a third quarter where forward James Harden went off for 16, actually outscoring Lithuania all by himself.
‘We’re relentless,” Faried said. “We just keep attacking, attacking and sooner or later legs are going to give out. It s seems like you can predict it every time.”
Point guard Kyrie Irving led Team USA with 18 points while Harden and guard Klay Thompson each added 16 in the route.
The Americans have made the games look easy by simply pushing the ball ahead for transition baskets. “When you play a U.S. team you cannot lose control for even one minute or two minutes. The game can get away from you that quickly,” Lithuania coach Jonas Kaslauskas said.
There was only one moment of drama against Lithuania. Late in the first half, Lithuania’s 6-11 Joan Valanciunas went to ward Team USA’s 6-11 center DeMarcuis Cousins with a high elbow and nailed him in the thoat. Cousins, the most volatile player on the team, did not react well and the two nearly came to blows. Officials whistled a technical foul on Cousins, who briefly left the physical game to calm down.
But there were no further potential diplomatic incidents until the press conference with a Slovenian reporter, who was rebuffed when he tried to get senior national coach Mike Krzyzewski to talk about his country’s team prior to the Round of 16 against Mexico Kryzewski told him he would be more than happy to talk to him over a glass of wine when the time was appropriate.
The reporter brought a bottle of wine with him Friday night.
“I have a gift for you,” he said.
“Don’t bring anything up here,” Krzyzewski warned.
But security was lax and the reporter persisted.
“It’s not such great wine, but sometimes you have to be modest,” the reporter said as he walked the bottle up to the podium and handed it to Coach K, who was gracious enough to accept it.
The champagne will have to wait until after Sunday’s game.
