Paul George: Australia men's team has 'a knack for being a little dirty'
RIO DE JANEIRO — Paul George knew it was coming.
The Australians, for anyone who somehow hasn't heard, are notorious for playing with the kind of edge and energy that often sparks the age-old debate about whether they're dirty. But after Team USA survived its scare on Wednesday, winning 98-88 to improve to 3-0 in Olympic men’s basketball play and extend its winning streak to 71 games in international play, the Indiana Pacers star made it clear that knowing about the Aussies’ infamous style and approving of it are very different things.
“We knew we were going to get their best,” said George, who started for the first time here but had just five points in 17 minutes. “It was an adjustment for us. This game kind of got out of hand with the chippy (play) and the physical play. We knew that coming in. This team has a knack for being a little dirty. I thought the second half we did a good job of just matching it.”
As George explained, the Americans were just fine playing that way. The problem, as he saw it, was the officials didn’t allow them to stand toe-to-toe in that department.
“Personally, we were doing the same stuff that they were doing and we were getting (nabbed) for it,” George said. “We’re fine playing physical. That’s our game in the NBA. If they’re going to allow us to play that way, you’ve got to let us play it both ways.”
It didn’t take long for anyone watching to see the way this game would go: Less than six minutes in, the infamously feisty Matthew Dellavedova (formerly of the Cleveland Cavaliers, currently of the Milwaukee Bucks) stepped into George’s space during a break in the action and received a hard bump from George with the basketball that he was holding. George, who admitted he was trying to send a message, was given a technical foul.
“I was going to let him know that it wasn’t going to go the way that they thought it was going to go,” George said. “We just had to match their physicality. That’s all it came down to. That’s the only way teams are going to be able to get us out of our comfort zone is to try to muddy the game up, do the little stuff to try to get to us.”
Not long after, Aussie/Dallas Mavericks big man Andrew Bogut hit Kyrie Irving (Cleveland Cavaliers) on a screen in what was one of many hard picks set on his night. As Bogut had said coming in, the Australians intensity and physicality that is perhaps their greatest strength created quite the edge.
A win over the Americans – no matter what it took – would have been historic for the Australian program that has never medaled in the Olympics (they have finished fourth three times). They still have a very good shot at breaking that trend, and could even see the Americans again in a possible gold medal game.
“No disrespect to the U.S., but we don’t want to go into the tournament aiming for second or fourth or ninth,” said Bogut, who had 15 points on seven-of-nine shooting. “You should go in with the mindset of trying to be first, and if they beat you they beat you.
“Just like an NBA team, you want to have the goal of trying to be there at the end. What’s the point of playing otherwise? So I think we had that mindset from the start, and the guys were kind of afraid to say, ‘gold medal.’ They’d say ‘Let’s get a medal,’ and we said as a group, ‘No, let’s go for gold,’ and then we’ll live with what we get after that if we don’t get it.”
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