US fires up for World Cup tilt

AFTER a month of practice and years of planning, the US men’s basketball team has arrived at the World Cup.

An all-night flight from Sydney to Shanghai that landed yesterday brought the twotime defending World Cup champion Americans to China’s most populous city, where they will play three firstround games starting Sunday.

It took more than 10 hours of flying time, then another two-plus hours for the team to clear customs and finally reach its hotel.

From there, a few hours of relaxing awaited before a scheduled afternoon practice.

“I’m ready to get things going,” US guard Kemba Walker of the Boston Celtics said yesterday.

A handful of fans waited outside the team hotel on a rainy morning, getting there a couple of hours before the buses from the airport pulled in just with the hope of grabbing a few autographs.

Some players obliged, as did US coach Gregg Popovich — who used a gold marker to carefully sign his name on an array of photos, sneakers and basketballs.

A couple of minutes later, the Americans were headed upstairs. Rest was foremost on the agenda.

“Great to be in Shanghai, start of World Cup in couple days,” US forward Khris Middleton of the Milwaukee Bucks said as he took the escalator towards his room. “Excited and ready to go.” The travel itineraries for the US have already been daunting. The flights from Los Angeles to Melbourne, then Melbourne to Sydney and now Sydney to Shanghai add up to nearly 30 hours and 22,500km in the air.

If the US makes the medal round, there will be about another 4000km of travel within China. Add the return flight to the US after the tournament, and the trip’s total will easily exceed 35,000km — more than half a regular season’s worth of travel for most NBA teams. All that flying comes in the span of basically a month.

And that doesn’t even count what it took for players to individually reach Las Vegas and Los Angeles, the site of the two training camp weeks.

“We’re feeling great,” US centre Myles Turner of the Indiana Pacers said.

“We learned a lot over these past couple weeks, learned a lot about each other, learned a lot about the competition.

“As opposed to just running a whole bunch of plays, we’re reading each other, making plays off each other.”