Team USA and Finland are playing in the FIBA Basketball World Cup starting on Saturday and the matchup is live on ESPN from TV and on WatchESPN streaming online from the Bizkaia Arena in Bilbao in the host country of Spain and the United States comes in as favorites along with the hosts and this starts at 3:30 pm ET with Derrick Rose, James Harden, Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving.
Irving is going to take the starting point guard job for the first game over Rose and the United States team has a brutal stretch of four games over five days and alternating the starters will help that. Irving has played very well since starting in camp and he had a solid game with 12 points and five assists in the blowout warm up against the DR and now he has the chance to start here.
Derrick Rose and Kyrie have been alternating starts as the top points guard and that obviously is a nice mix to choose from and now that the tournament is starting, it will be even more important to have two players that can lead the offense. Rose is coming back from a serious injury and this will help him get rest here and there when needed for head coach Mike Krzyzewski and now the United States comes in as the favorite for the tournament, at least one of them. The team won its exhibition games and now they will open against Finland before playing against Turkey, New Zealand, the Dominican Republic and Ukraine.
The United States have those games from August 30 to September 4 and then the round of 16 comes before the quarterfinals from Sept 9 to 10 and the semis will be the next two days, while the Gold Medal game will be on September 14. Spain is also one of the teams that is expected to go far in the tournament and they are the favorites to match up with the United States in the finals.
LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul and Paul George are all from the US and are not playing, with George being out with that devastating injury, while everyone else sat out. Kevin Love also was out of things and he now is in Cleveland and Anthony Davis has been playing very well during his run with the team, averaging 13.8 points, 6.5 rebounds and 3.8 blocks while playing 20 minutes in the exhibition games. The US is in Group C and they have Finland first and the other games for the first day included Ukraine and the Dominican Republic along with New Zealand and Turkey.
Check here for the Team USA and Finland live coverage from the FIBA tournament on ESPN.
