The winners of these matches will fight for the medals. :thumb:

USA, Spain, Argentina and Greece have been the best teams so far, and are the big favorites to get to semis.

Argentina has probably the toughest match, the young and corageous Turkish team.
Spain will face a Lithuanian team that suffers a lot the absense of Sarunas Jasikevicius. But its still a team capable of a surprise, with sharp shooter Macijauskas as their main threat.
Greece, a tough team with great defense, and many players who share the spotlight will face France. The French without Tony Parker don't seem to be a contender for the title.
USA will probably have an easy game against Dirk Nowitzki's team. Germany has the Maverick PF as the only serious threat for the US team.

The games:

Argentina :fingerscr
vs. 29 August 2006
Turkey

Spain
vs. 29 August 2006
Lithuania

-------------------------------

Greece
vs. 30 August 2006
France

United States
vs. 30 August 2006
Germany

Who will win it all?

I hope Argentina will win it all. They have a very good team and Nocioni is one of my favorite international NBA players.

I hope Argentina will win it all. They have a very good team and Nocioni is one of my favorite international NBA players.

I hope so too... but Spain and USA are favorites over Argentina right now.

Today Spain beated Lithuania easily... The Spanish played great as always. Lithuanian star Macijauskas was non existant.

In half an hour, Argentina plays against Turkey.

damn; I missed the first quarter- anybody else watching right now?
Fino's playing good- made an action right now when he got the rebound, brought the ball up, dribbled and made the jumper easily
And a 3pt by FIno- he's involved on the offensive end very much, gets alot of touches, drives the lane quite often and creates open looks for his teammates!
Right now he's got 7pts at 100% shooting, with one 3pter, one jumper and one drive to the lane.

wow! Great steal by Delfino (took away the ball from the PG) and a following slam! He's also good at rebounding and even gets some against the bigs from the Turks. I may seem a little bit enthusiastic but that's simply because Delfino is playing really good this far.
Solid D (his opponent has been invisible this far), some nice rebounds, good passes and a good shot selection (that one missed shot was because the clock was running out of time so he had to jack it up)

Argentina 83 - Turkey 58

Great win by the Argentine team. In a moment of the game there was a 37 point margin. Argentina played the last quarter with the bench players. Delfino had an excellent performance.


ARGENTINA
Nocioni 21
Delfino 14
Scola 13
Oberto 10
Herrmann 8
Ginóbili 7
Sánchez 5
Fernández 3
Wolkowyski 2
Prigioni 0

TURKEY
Akyol 11
Erdogan 10
Peker 8
Kurtoglu 5
Ilyasova 5
Demirel 4
Erden 4
Gonlum 3
Atsur 3
Kutluay 2
Arslan 2
Solak 1

Spain - Argentina in Semis will be the best match of the tournament.

Currently watching USA- Germany. Nowitzki alone isn't enough to beat the great US team, although they really play with heart.
One thing that is very obvious and kind of weird is how bad the americans shoot. They don't hit open jumpers or jumpers of the dribble and rely solely on their athleticism. Every euro team and also Argentina have far better shooters on their teams.

Greece beated France. And Germany played a great first half, with a zone defense, challenging the US to throw three point shots... and the Americans sucked at it. But is wasn't enough for the Germans. USA won by 20.
Now they will face Greece, a much more dangerous rival.

And now the Semis!!!

Two extremelly tough games.

Spain - Argentina

USA - Greece

Greece beated France. And Germany played a great first half, with a zone defense, challenging the US to throw three point shots... and the Americans sucked at it. But is wasn't enough for the Germans. USA won by 20.
Now they will face Greece, a much more dangerous rival.

And now the Semis!!!

Two extremelly tough games.

Spain - Argentina

USA - Greece

"The Americans weren't going to win this game with their shooting. So they made sure they didn't need to.

Carmelo Anthony (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/players/3706/) scored 10 of his 19 points in the third quarter, when the United States finally took control with its pressure defense, and the Americans went on to beat Germany 85-65 Wednesday night in the quarterfinals of the world championships".



U.S. 85, Germany 65 - NBA - Yahoo! Sports (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=As86ze0WtVDi0efdYRy9Yhg5nYcB?slug=ap-worlds-us-germany&prov=ap&type=lgns)

The worst thing is that LBJ and Wade are being taught pressure defense by one of the all-time great coaches. :(

Who ended up guarding Dirk? He only had 3 FG. Nice job.

The worst thing is that LBJ and Wade are being taught pressure defense by one of the all-time great coaches. :(

especially the way wade is allowed to foul the mess out of people in the nba. he fouled out like 5 times in the pistons series.

For all the talk about the bad refs in international basketball, I think they ref a better style than the NBA. The Americans quickly came to the realization that they have to play through a lot of contact. They quit flopping and whining, which makes it a lot more enjoyable to watch.

Yeah, like the way the NBA used to be. When you drove the lane and finished like a man.

SI.com - Team USA adjusts to physical play in FIBA world championships (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/basketball/nba/wires/08/30/2030.ap.bko.worlds.us.0687/)

Just ask LeBron. :)