MANILA, Philippines – The Americans didn’t shoot well, the ball didn’t move from teammate to teammate at the usual speed and they certainly didn’t rebound.
In addition, their underdog developed an excellent game plan and implemented it almost perfectly.
But it would take every last little moment for Montenegro to upset Team USA, and they didn’t have it.
Anthony Edwards, who all but guaranteed Team USA would win the next two games, scored all 17 of his second-half points, Austin Reaves delivered three on time and the Americans outlasted Montenegro 85-73 in a second-round FIBA World Cup game .
Edwards, who remains the team’s leading scorer in the Cup, overcame an 0-of-5 start in the first half, which ended with Montenegro leading 39-38.
“I felt like I let my team down in the first half,” Edwards said. “For example, I wasn’t aggressive and I stopped shooting after going 0-for-5, things I don’t normally do. So I had to, you know, talk to myself in the locker room to get going.”
The Americans, who secured a spot in the quarterfinals with Lithuania’s victory over Greece on Friday, play Lithuania on Sunday at 8:40 a.m. ET.
Edwards hit his first jumper at 9:25 of the third quarter and scored again on the following possession. He finished with 10 points, clearly on the right track after giving himself a tough talk, and finished the game with 7 of 16 shooting, three rebounds and four turnovers.
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It was still a tense game until there were less than three minutes left. Reaves, who scored a total of 12 points, hit a 3 with 2:48 left for a 75-68 lead, the U.S.’s largest lead to that point. He did his “ice in the veins” dance when the shot splashed, and boy was he no joke. With Montenegro keeping pace thanks to a huge lead on the glass and timely baskets from their NBA All-Star, Chicago Bulls star Nikola Vučević, Reaves’ shot was crucial.
“Obviously it was a big one,” Reaves said. “It’s one of those pieces that makes me look good when it comes in. If that’s not the case, everyone looks at me sideways.”
Within two minutes, Jaren Jackson Jr.’s skyhook, Mikal Bridges’ lay-in and Edwards’ 2-foot throw put this score out of reach. Jackson, who struggled with foul trouble in the first half, finished the game with 11 points but not a single rebound. Bridges scored 10 points, as did Tyrese Haliburton, who led the way with six assists off the bench.
It was Haliburton in place of Jalen Brunson, who Team USA head coach Steve Kerr had on the court in the final minutes.
“I just felt like both Ty and Austin played great,” Kerr said. “We went back to Ant and JJ and decided to leave those guys on the floor. And it’s a good lineup. If I’m not mistaken, I think we had that lineup against Germany (in the exhibition season). So it’s a lineup that we trust and like, and they played well and got the job done in a good rhythm.”
Now to the carnage.
It starts with Montenegro and Vučević, who finished with 18 points and 16 rebounds. These are gaudy numbers and perhaps to be expected. He is the only current NBA player on his team and a two-time All-Star.
What can’t happen (but did happen) was Montenegro’s overall lead of 49:31 on the glass. Vučević’s team scored 22 second chance points. It tried to take advantage of its significant size advantage (Josh Hart, who is 6-foot-5, started on the four-man line) and attacked the post, which led to Jackson’s foul trouble in the first quarter.
Montenegro’s only other double-digit scorer was Youngstown State graduate Kendrick Perry (14 points), but without a whopping 22 turnovers (the pressure from Haliburton-Reaves-Hart had something to do with it), it might have produced the biggest upset in basketball history of the country.
“I knew we were going to win,” Edwards said, admitting that his Wednesday guarantee came to mind as that game ended. “Yeah, right. I knew we were going to go, I knew we were going to win. I mean, they took a lot of shots.”
No, actually Montenegro only scored the same number of field goals as Edwards’ team. The Americans made 5 of 19 shots from 3-point range, but were just 1 of 9 in the first half. They made 19 of 30 field goals, but the ball stayed in Edwards’ hands and on the post, more than Kerr, who has praised Team USA’s ball movement in the past, is used to it. To the chagrin of shooting expert and USA travel advisor Chip Engelland, they also missed 10 of 30 foul shots.
“They’re tough to play against,” Reaves said. “They’re trying to screw up the game. They’re trying to slow it down, make it a low possession game, and that’s kind of the opposite of what we want to do. So we had to figure it out in the second half and made big plays down the stretch.
“It was good for us to get one of those games and get in tight positions so we know how to handle that adversity and play.”
Paolo Banchero (eight points, four rebounds) played with a badly taped right hand after suffering a thumb injury in the first round against Greece. Bobby Portis saw extended minutes but shot just 1 of 6.
The Americans are now 4-0, and the worst thing they could do is finish two rounds 4-1. Should they lose to Lithuania, Team USA would win a tiebreaker against Greece based on a first-round win. With Friday’s defeat, Montenegro was eliminated from the championship contention.
But if the U.S. had lost that Friday, tiebreaker chaos might have ensued. And remember that qualification for the Olympic Games is also at stake at the World Cup. Team USA has to finish among the top two teams on both American continents at the Cup; Canada, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Brazil are currently there.
So, yeah, you better get to work on those boards. And these 3s. And free throws.
“I thought Montenegro was fantastic,” Kerr said. “This is a really well-coached team. They had their game plan. Everyone knew their role and they carried it out. They got, I think, (23) offensive boards and tried to force us inside. But I’m proud of our boys. It wasn’t our evening offensively.
“We’ll watch the tape. I thought we didn’t move the ball well at all and that’s why we got into the trouble we did. But these games are going to happen and you have to be able to fight through them and I think our guys did a great job of that.”
(Photo of Austin Reaves and Anthony Edwards: Stephen Gosling / NBAE via Getty Images)