U.S. Men Almost Let Victory Slip Away to Turkey

One week before its opener at the Athens Games, the U.S. men’s Olympic team took a step backward, even though the Americans didn’t quite see it that way.

The American team blew most of a 14-point fourth-quarter lead against a Turkish team missing Hedo Turkoglu, one of its two NBA players, before coming away with a 79-67 victory Sunday night at Istanbul, Turkey. It was not an encouraging performance for the Americans, who struggled against a team that didn’t qualify for the Olympics, just as they had earlier on their European trip against Germany.

A 19-8 run, including several of Turkey’s 11 three-pointers, narrowed the home team’s deficit to 68-65 with 3 1/2 minutes left before the U.S. team turned up its defense to close out the game.

“It was a good experience for us, because we’re going to have games like this [in Athens] when there is some adversity and they start making shots against us,” Coach Larry Brown said. “We’re just going to have to deal with it.”

Tim Duncan led the United States with 16 points, and Allen Iverson scored 13. No one else reached double figures.

Most alarming for the Americans was the way the team’s core of young players, including LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade, couldn’t keep Turkey from making a game of it down the stretch. Though Brown said he was tempted to leave his young players in, he reinserted the team’s elder statesmen, Duncan and Iverson, who steadied the team to help close out the victory.

“I am happy that we’re getting better and starting to become a team, but we have a ways to go,” Iverson said.

“As long as we recognize we have to do more, we’ll be all right. If we felt like we were there, it would be something to worry about.”

With Turkoglu out because of a broken nose, Ibrahim Kutluay led Turkey with 19 points and Serkan Erdogan scored 17. They teamed for a flurry of threes that thrilled the crowd of about 10,000 at the hot, cramped Abdi Ipekci Arena, a low-ceilinged gym that is a bandbox by NBA standards.

And when Turkey made its rally, the noise was intense.

“I don’t know if we’ll play in an environment any better than this,” Brown said, “and I think the players really enjoyed the experience.”

But some clearly didn’t.

Starting point guard Stephon Marbury struggled again, drawing a technical foul for arguing with a referee and going scoreless in 19 minutes. Wade received a technical for defiantly rolling the ball away from an official after a call he didn’t like, and Duncan shot several angry looks at the referees when they failed to call fouls.

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Lisa Leslie scored 12 points and Sue Bird had 11, leading the U.S. women’s Olympic team to a 68-38 victory over France in Salamanca, Spain.

The Americans rallied from an early 10-5 deficit and tied the score on two free throws by Tina Thompson with 3:29 left in the first quarter. Leslie made a layup a minute later to give the Americans the lead for good.