They might be called reserves on the U.S. basketball team, but would be starters and All-Stars in any other squad.
Led by Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Love, who scored 16 points each, the U.S. men's team pulled away from Tunisia in the second half to win 110-63. Surprisingly leading only by 13 points at the half, such is the strength of the tournament favorites, coach Mike Krzyzewski brought in his reserves in the second half.
Anthony, Deron Williams, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Love and Andre Igoudala, opened the third quarter with a 21-3 run, to put any doubt of a Tunisia comeback behind.
Kevin Durant had 13 to go with the 12 points of dunk-happy Anthony Davis.
Krzyzewski said it was always his plan to begin with the second unit at the start of the second half, and despite the struggles in the first, he was pretty happy with the win.
"It's not going to be a perfect thing, you know," Krzyzewski said. "But, overall, tonight was good. I mean, come on, it was 110-63."
Durant was all praise for the team's reserves. "That was a great lift, man," the Oklahoma City Thunder forward said. "That's the best thing about this team, there's no drop off. We've got All-Stars off the bench. Those guys did a great job for us.
"We knew that they were going to come out and play hard. We missed some shots early on and we gave up some easy baskets, but we came back and started fighting a little harder."
"They could have absolutely have taken us to the cleaners but Coach K's discipline made sure that didn't happen," Tunisia coach Adel Tlatli added through an interpreter.
The U.S. next play Nigeria on Thursday.
In other matches, France bounced back from defeat against the U.S. to beat Argentina71-64. The South Americans were expected to prevail in the encounter, after their impressive 102-79 win over Lithuania in their opening match, but the Europeans came out with the victory.
Spain, expected to be the U.S. team's main competition, shrugged off a slow start to win 82-70 against Australia, thanks mainly to a third quarter surge, while Lithuania registered their first victory of the men's competition with a 72-53 result over Nigeria.
Home team Great Britain suffered their second-straight loss, going down 67-62 to Brazil, as Russia thrashed China 73-54.
