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Olympics Men's Basketball Final Preview: USA v Spain

Finally playing as a team, the US should romp home on Sunday in the men's basketball final, says Nick Shiambouros.

Even the weight of my money could not stop Team USA rolling in to the Olympic final of the men's basketball tournament in Beijing by beating Argentina 101-81 in a physical encounter on Friday.

Carmelo Anthony and centre Luis Scola had strong words to say to each other as the game began to slip away from Argentina late in the fourth quarter. Scola should consider himself very fortunate that he was not ejected from the game after putting his elbow in the face of Anthony under the basket.

A lot of balanced scoring was the order of the day for the Americans as Wade, Bryant, Paul, Bosh and Howard scored 10 or more points but the star of the night was Carmelo Anthony who scored a game high 21 points for Team USA.

This performance cemented my opinion of how well the US are playing as a unit. There is no need to clear out and give it to Lebron James or Kobe Bryant to drive to the hoop as every player is so confident when handling the basketball and every player on the team can score.

Unlike previous Olympic tournaments, I see a great sense of focus and determination particularly from Bryant who is quite happy to let James share the leadership of this team towards the gold medal. If Bryant had the same attitude in the NBA finals things could have been different for the Lakers against Boston.

In the other semi-final Spain beat Lithuania 91-86 in a hard fought affair with Pau Gasol leading the scoring with 19 points. This one could have gone either way and Lithuania had plenty of chances in the third quarter to build a big lead but it was not to be. Spain finished the game strongly after a fourth quarter comeback led by Gasol to outscore their opponents by nine points.

Lithuania will contest for the bronze medal after a very good tournament and can be very proud of this effort.

The gold medal game between team USA and Spain takes place on Sunday and the Americans are trading at [1.06] on the exchange. The bad news for Spain is that Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol are teammates in Los Angeles and Bryant will exploit every weakness that Gasol has on Sunday.

And that is just the beginning as Wade, James, Anthony and company will want to make a statement to the rest of the world by beating Spain

There are plenty of markets on offer for the final and I like the USA -16.5 points at around [2.0] for the win. I think the Americans may try to run the score up in the fourth quarter if they are comfortably ahead I think this could be the value play.

I can't imagine a situation where Team USA are not crowned Olympic champions on Sunday as not only are they the best team in the world, they have also played the most attractive basketball. For me it would be an injustice if they did not win Olympic gold.

There are not many team games in sport where the most entertaining is also the best, but this one most certainly is.