The guard duo of Rudy Fernandez and Jose Calderon were to ones to force Greece on their knees, whilst bruising forward player Marc Gasol gave them enough support down low. Greece lost 81-66 mainly due to some dreadful free-throw shooting. Greece had 24 free-throw attempts to Spain’s 25, yet they managed only 11 points from these whilst Spain doubled that with 22.

Next up, Croatia never found out just how tough a team Australia has become. Roko-Leni Ukic and his team-mates managed to take the game early on as they built a 16-point lead in the first half of a game that turned into a shooting fest. Croatia was red hot from downtown hitting on 12 of 16 attempts from three-point range.

Australia went with their normal game plan of feeding the low-post and their NBA star Andrew Bogut. Yet when those long bombs started falling they simply lost their cool and went away from the plan. Whilst the Aussies were a scorching 60 per cent from inside, they took an ill-advised 19 attempts from three-point range, connecting on only six of those.

Then came the crème de la crème, the main event for basketball purists - the Argentina-Lithuania game. The diamond ball tournament last week has taught us never to count defending Olympica champions Argentina out of a game. In last week’s final they came back from a 19-point deficit to win the tourney. This time around they practically sleepwalked through the first three-and-a-half quarters.

It only shows how good this team is that, even with such a bad display, they still managed to keep the game close with only a six-point Lithuanian lead after three quarters. With a little less than five minutes to go Argentina started playing offense, and with three minutes to go, they even revved up their defense. At that point they were down by as much as 11, yet they evened it up with a minute left.

Alas, the comeback took too much out of them as they squandered their next two possessions, even though they managed to shut out Lithuania. In the closing seconds, however, the Denver Nuggets’ Linas Kleiza made a huge three after which Argentina gave the ball away, giving Lithuania a set of free throws to establish the 79-75 final score.

The “exhibition game” between the USA and home team China capped off a great day for basketball. The Chinese team was a long shot to win this one and, whilst their performance in the opening quarter was courageous, we quickly ound out that they were never on par with the Redeem Team.

China actually tried to play for its only chance to keep this close. They allowed the US to collapse their defense in the post around Yao Ming and took as many three-point shots as possible. This seemed to work early on as they hit most of their attempts. Alas, as those legs were getting more and more tired, the shots tended to trickle out.

The US simply took care of business. They played fast, they pressured China’s ballhandlers, and they gave Chinese fans a show where each move left you in awe, yet did not disrespect the opponent.

In fact, it was kind of interesting to hear that these fans cheered just as much after each US basket as they did after each Chinese one. Clearly the NBA craze that was started by Yao Ming crossing the Pacific has made heroes out of the Kobe Bryants and Dwyane Wades just as much as it has out of Ming and his team-mates.