From the Shameless Self-Promotion Department, BallinEurope reminds readers to represent along with yours truly in the Daily Dime Live chatroom over at ESPN.com tonight starting at 5pm CET (11am EST).
As for the games themselves, Official BallinEurope Fearless Predictions™ follow…
In short, one supposes only Kirk Penney’s jumpshot can prevent a pair of blowouts.
New Zealand could in theory pull off the stunner by exploiting the outside shot, kryptonite for the superdefense-first Team Russia. Wonder how Team Russia managed to allow China to score 80 points? By giving Yue Sun and Jianlian Yi open looks from everywhere from 10 feet and out, resulting in 12-of-24 shooting, 33 points and a game more competitive than strictly necessary. And Russia should just feel lucky Greece only went 6-for-22 from outside in the first tournament game.
BiE can’t sustain the illusion, though … Russia wins handily.
The early game, of course, pits those historically-linked squads of the USA and Angola. The latter was of course the first side to feel the Dream Team’s wrath in an official game, back in 1992.
All right, you probably know where this one is going, so BiE’ll just say Team USA in a walk and leave you with a certain 18-year old clip.
