I know it's early, but I have to say what everyone is already thinking: three games into the 2008 Olympic Basketball Tournament, Nuggets star forward Carmelo Anthony increasingly looks like the odd man out on Team USA.We saw spectacular basketball out of Melo during both the 2006 World Championships in Japan and the 2007 Tournament of the Americas in Las Vegas. Some even argued - including USA head coach Mike Krzyzewski - that Melo had been the best player on the team. But in Beijing, he hasn't looked like his past international basketball self.
If you look at the box score from this morning's victory over Greece, you'll see that Melo had 8 points and 6 rebounds in 22 minutes of play, the fifth highest playing time on the team. But if you actually watched the game (as I did at 6am this morning), you know that Melo looked sluggish, picked up a lot of lazy fouls and was basically a no-factor for the third straight game. All the "and one" plays Melo feasted off of the last two summers seem to have gone to power forward Chris Bosh, who's having a terrific Olympics thus far. And the breakaway layups and dunks Melo was on the receiving end of in past international competition have gone to Dwyane Wade, who's doing a great job making me and a lot of other pundits look stupid for questioning his inclusion on the team.
As a Nuggets fan, I hope Coach K figures out a way to get Melo more involved in the upcoming games. But right now he doesn't look right and I'd hate for Melo to have two bad Olympics in a row.
Meanwhile, Melo's Nuggets teammate Linas Kleiza pulled down the 11 rebounds Melo claimed he'd be getting in Lithuania's victory over Russia today. Unfortunately, Kleiza shot 1-7 from the field to go along with his solid rebounding effort.