Carmelo Anthony is the alpha dog on a dominant U.S. basketball team full of NBA stars

Being a leader on a team overflowing with players who fill that role on their respective NBA clubs can be tricky, but New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony has smoothly become the acknowledged alpha male of the U.S. men’s Olympic team.

He is vocal, teammates say. He has eased their transition to international play by sharing his wisdom before and during the Rio Games, his fourth Olympic tournament. And on Monday, as they overcame a sluggish start and pulled away for a 113-69 rout of Venezuela, being a leader meant he had to cheer up teammate DeMarcus Cousins after Cousins fouled out in nine minutes against beefy Venezuela center Gregory Echenique in the Group A preliminary-round game.

“I told him if he fouled out I was going to give him a hug,” Anthony said. “I’m a hugger. Sometimes you’ve just got to give him a hug and tell him everything’s going to be all right.”

Everything was fine in the end for Team USA (2-0), despite a few anxious moments.

The teams were tied at 18 after the first quarter, with the big-bodied Echenique — who played against Cousins in high school and later played at Rutgers and Creighton — presenting a problem the Americans couldn’t quite solve. They got in quick foul trouble and let Venezuela (0-2) set the pace until early in the second quarter, when a 30-8 run put them beyond the reach of the well-coached but undermanned Venezuelans.

“We weren’t worried. We just had to kind of make some adjustments,” Anthony said. “They kept us in half court. We didn’t get out in transition. We missed some shots early. We played their game, but once we made that adjustment we were good.”

The adjustment in essence went back to what Coach Mike Krzyzewski has been trying to emphasize since the team gathered in Las Vegas last month: focus on defense, and everything will come from that. It also helped them wear down Venezuela, which got 18 points from Echenique and 19 from John Cox, who played at the University of San Francisco.

“It is impossible to keep intensity the whole game but it is difficult for 40 minutes against those people,” Venezuela Coach Nestor Garcia said. “We tried to be aggressive because they like to play a lot of one-on-one and like to look for the mismatch. You don’t want to give a chance that they run because when they run, they kill.”

Paul George of the Indiana Pacers led both teams with 20 points, Jimmy Butler of the Chicago Bulls scored 17, Kevin Durant had 16 and Clippers center DeAndre Jordan had nine rebounds and a few rim-rattling dunks while scoring 14 points.

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Anthony played a crucial role by keeping his teammates calm for that second-quarter comeback and beyond. In the process, he also passed Michael Jordan for third place on the career U.S. Olympic scoring list — and on the 24th anniversary of the Jordan-led Dream Team’s gold-medal triumph at the Barcelona Games.

Anthony, who had 14 points Monday, has 262 career points in his four Olympic tournaments. Before the Olympic torch is extinguished in Rio he should pass LeBron James (273) and David Robinson (270). Michael Jordan, who played in two Olympics, had 256 points. “He’s old,” DeAndre Jordan said affectionately of the 32-year-old Anthony, the team’s oldest player.

But he’s still good at delivering more than hugs.

“He’s been vocal, he’s been pushing us to be better every day, every game, to continue to grow,” said Toronto Raptors guard Kyle Lowry, who had a game-high nine assists for the U.S. “He’s done a great job at being an unbelievable vocal leader and showing it by example. KD, Kyrie [Irving], Carmelo — those are our guys and we’re going to continue to ride them.”

Anthony said he wasn’t aware of his move up the U.S. Olympic scoring ladder until a reporter told him after the game. “Anytime you can break a record or make history or pass somebody great like Michael Jordan or anybody else, it’s always an honor,” he said. “We still have more games to go, so hopefully we can break some more records.”

But after defeating China by 57 points in their opener and eventually rolling past Venezuela on Monday, their path will become more treacherous Wednesday. Their next opponent is Australia, which has decisively beaten France and Serbia here, and, as Krzyzewski noted, “They’ll start five NBA players. . . . They can beat us. We know that and we’ll prepare accordingly.”

Whatever they do, Anthony will be at the center of it. He’s ready for a tough challenge after so many romps. “They’re a tough team, a physical team,” he said of the Aussies. “They like to make the game ugly so we’ve got to be prepared for that.”

Even if that means giving out a few hugs.

Follow Helene Elliott on Twitter @helenenothelen