By the time you read this, the United States will likely have romped Senegal, but I’d like to rewind it to the Italy game for a second. Fascinating game to watch. Not only did we finally play a team equipped to exploit our weaknesses, but they were also dickhead enough to get under our skin.

In a lot of ways, the Italian basketball team is like a less-talented version of their soccer team. They’re dickheads, but not really in a bad way. They’ll shove, grab, hold, flop, and talk about your mother… they’ll piss you off to the point where you retaliate, and then you’ll get called for the foul. I’ll be honest with you, I’m starting to admire the Italian approach to sports, which is to be a huge dickhead. They just don’t give a fuck, and I love that.

There was a point late in the first quarter where Dwyane Wade was clearly… if not rattled, at least agitated. He wanted to hurt this guy. #7 for Italy was fucking with him, and a whistle was blown, and Wade kept walking into the guy. And then, as finally seperated, Wade hit him in the head with his forearm. Intentionally, but done so as to look unintentional. Wade clearly wanted a piece of this guy.

But the guy who rose above it all was Carmelo Anthony. You know why he’s been our best player so far in this tournament? His offensive assertiveness. There are no real leaders on this team, and Carmelo’s sliding in and filling that void. When we need a bucket, ‘Melo’s going to be the guy to go out and find it. He had 35 today, 29 in the 2nd half. And it was a very non-selfish 35.

I’ve done a total 180 on Carmelo in this tournament (even if he does wear backpacks to press conferences), and he’s done a total 180 from what he did in Athens. I thought that there was no way that a guy who bitched about his playing time in 2004 should be invited to play on another team. But he’s been perfect. He’s working hard on defense, and he’s earning the #1 leadership role on this team. I never would have guessed those things would happen.

Without Carmelo, there’s no way we win that game yesterday. Wade played very well in the 2nd half, but it was Carmelo who put the team on his back. If he didn’t take control of the game, exactly when the team needed him to, I am 100% confident that we would have lost yesterday to a weak Italian team. I’m looking at Carmelo in a whole new light, and I think this tough game will be a huge benefit to our guys down the line in this tournament.

The other encouraging thing was that we switched up our defense in the second half, sagging back and not going for so many steals. It was still man defense, of course, but they played it loose, limited the dribble drives, and thus, eliminated the need for so much help defense, something Italy gleefully exploited in the first half. The change of philosophies on the fly was probably the most encouraging thing I’ve seen yet from USA in this tournament. We didn’t look like the one-trick pony that we had been to this point. The halfcourt offense, however, still needs a little shaping up.

And I’m still going to win my bet with YAY!Sports.