MACAU — The Americans are headed for Shanghai. They look ready to go right to Beijing.
With Kobe Bryant defending the way he did last summer and Dwyane Wade soaring again, the U.S. Olympic basketball team has easily won its first three exhibition games.
Two more until they start to count.
“I think we’re in pretty good shape defensively,” forward Carmelo Anthony said. “Offensively we’re tuning some things up. We’ve got two more games before the real deal starts.”
Bryant harassed longtime U.S. nemesis Sarunas Jasikevicius into a miserable night and helped the Americans roll to a 120-84 victory over Lithuania on Friday night.
Jasikevicius was unstoppable in a win over the United States four years ago. So Bryant, who has made it a point to defend the opponent’s best perimeter threat since joining the team last summer, blanketed him in the same manner as he did Phoenix guard Leandro Barbosa of Brazil in the Olympic qualifying tournament.
“Kobe’s our best defender, hands down,” forward Carlos Boozer said. “And Kobe takes on the challenge of guarding their best perimeter player regardless of who it is, regardless if he’s a point guard, 2, 3, 4, whatever it is.”
Wade scored 19 points, Dwight Howard had 17, and LeBron James 15 for the Americans, who raced to a big early lead, then pulled away again after Lithuania got within single digits early in the second half. Bryant finished with 13 points, nine during the big U.S. first quarter.
Notes
MEDIA: Olympic organizers unblocked some Internet sites at the main press center and media venues while others remained off limits for journalists covering the Beijing games. The move falls short of the “free and unfettered access” the organizers and Chinese officials had promised for months. However, it was an improvement from earlier in the week when sites for the likes of Amnesty International or Tiananmen Square could not be opened.
SWIMMING: Swimmer Jessica Hardy withdrew from the U.S. Olympic team four weeks after testing positive for a banned substance at the Olympic trials. The 21-year-old from Long Beach, Calif., could have contested the drug test results before the American Arbitration Association and potentially filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which would have kept her first Olympic berth in doubt until the eve of the games that open Aug. 8. GYMNASTICS: Tim McNeill received a warning for getting a prescribed anti-inflammatory shot without the proper clearance from anti-doping authorities, the second gymnast in a month to be punished for that violation. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency said McNeill tested positive May 24 at the U.S. gymnastics championships for a glucocorticosteroid, a cortisone-like drug that is only allowed during competitions with an exemption. Olympian Morgan Hamm had a positive test for the very same anti-inflammatory that day, and also drew a warning from USADA.
FENCING: Italian fencer Andrea Baldini will miss the Beijing Olympics after testing positive for a diuretic during last month’s European Championships in Ukraine. Baldini won a silver medal in foil at the 2006 and 2007 world championships and was considered a gold-medal candidate for Beijing. He will be dropped from the team for the Olympics, which start next week.
WRESTLING: An appeal by Greco-Roman wrestler Joe Warren to reduce his two-year doping suspension was dismissed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency said a three-person CAS panel turned down the appeal by Warren, of Colorado Springs, who was suspended after testing positive for marijuana. Warren, 31, flunked a drug test at the Senior World Team Trials on June 10, 2007. It was his second doping offense.
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