Team USA Basketball got the first scare of the tournament quite early. Turkey's basketball team, which were the hosts of the 2010 World Championship and also lost in the Finals against Team USA, were sharp as a knife and hungry like a wolf-at least for three quarters.

Unlike the systematic rout that they dealt against Finland, Turkey gave them a stiff challenge and they even led by 6 as late as the third quarter.

From an AP report, James Harden admits they might have become overconfident: "I guess we felt like last night's game was pretty easy and tonight was going to be the same way, but Turkey came out and they gave us their punch from the beginning. We took it and we were sluggish. That second half we played a lot better."

The circumstances led to it, though:

"A night after crushing Finland by 59 in its biggest rout ever while using NBA players in the former world championship, the Americans couldn't take control against Turkey until early in the fourth quarter after compiling a 17-1 run."

The shooters shot blanks today and the US had to rely on their most athletic frontcourt players:

"Kenneth Faried scored 22 points, Anthony Davis all of his 19 in the second half, and the U.S. rebounded from a rare deficit at halftime to beat Turkey 98-77 on Sunday in the Basketball World Cup."

Anthony Davis said: "I think we didn't come ready to play in the first half and we can't afford to do that if we want to win a gold medal. So we've got to come out ready to play no matter who we're playing against."

ESPN's Marc Stein pointed out two points of weakness:

"Steph Curry started an uncharacteristic 0-for-8 from 3-point land and 1-for-10 in the tournament overall before finally getting a few 3s to drop. But Curry is shooting only 4-for-17 in total through two games. 

Playing his first back-to-back games since November, Derrick Rose looked nowhere near as sharp as he did in Saturday night's Group C opener against Finland and settled for a quiet two points in 17 minutes"