Improvement vital for NBA stars to beat Greece, reach world final
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US stars know they must improve to beat Greece on Friday and qualify for Sunday's World Basketball Championship final, where either 2004 Olympic champion Argentina or title-hungry Spain will await.
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SAITAMA, Japan  - Despite suffering a demoralizing   defeat by a brilliant Greece at the world basketball   championship, the United States are looking long-term.
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The dirty little secret about this US men&#39;s basketball team is that it has played harder than any team in the Olympics and has been superior at doing anything that required plain old-fashioned effort.
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A confident American team enters the playoff rounds of the World Basketball Championship on an impressive run but some familiar faces are blocking the US path to reclaiming the global throne.
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ATHENS - They didn&#39;t always play with the energy of desperate men. But they played harder. They didn&#39;t often play an attractive brand of basketball, but they played it sometimes.
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SAITAMA, Japan  - Sharp-shooting Spain blew away   Greece 70-47 to capture an emotional first world basketball   championship gold medal on Sunday.
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US players are going to have to work harder than they wanted next year after finishing third at the World Basketball Championship, but the experience could pay golden dividends in 2008 at Beijing.
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The United States basketball team are through to the Olympic semi-finals after a 102-94 victory over Spain. The &#39;Dream Team&#39; had a one-point lead after the first-half then pulled away in the last quarter, but Spain always posed a threat.
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ATHENS -- LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and a couple of their Olympic teammates made it over to watch last night's women's game between the United States and China. They saw a team shoot well, pass well, rebound well, and dominate -- everything they are not doing so far.
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Greece beat favourites USA 101-95 at the World Basketball Championship semi-finals in Japan.
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LeBron James is on a mission to put USA Basketball back on top of the world. In a game that was decided in the first 10 minutes, James scored 23 points Tuesday to lead the United States to an emphatic 116-63 win over South Korea in a tuneup game for the world championships.
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ATHENS, Greece - Bronze is the best the American men's basketball team can do, and the reason is simple: They were beaten by a better team, Argentina. Manu Ginobili scored 29 points to lead his nation to another victory over the country that used to dominate the sport, an 89-81 win in the Olympic semifinals Friday night...
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Greece advanced to the semifinals of the World Basketball Championships, and a date with the United States, with a 73-56 wire-to-wire dispatch of France in the first game of yesterday's doubleheader.
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US National Basketball Association stars are concerned that playing in international events is hurting their ability to play their best in quest of a league crown.
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The U.S. men's basketball team can console itself with two things: third place and the highest point total of the Olympic tournament.
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Greece turned a 12-point deficit into a 14-point lead with a stretch of hot shooting and went on to beat the Americans in the semifinals of the world championship.
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Future United States Olympic teams of National Basketball Association stars will have more training with international rules before arriving at the Games, NBA commissioner David Stern said.