Image via WikipediaISTANBUL -- Before it can win a world championship, the United States needed to start looking like a world champion.
Kevin Durant, Chauncey Billups and the rest of the Americans finally had that appearance Monday, powering into the quarterfinals with a 121-66 victory over Angola.
"Obviously we want to stay humble, but at the same time we have to know that we can do it," forward Kevin Love said. "We know regardless of what people are saying, that we still are the favorites and we should play and really act like it, too."
They did, opening the knockout round with a quick knockout.
With Billups scoring 16 of his 19 points and Durant all of his 17 in the first half, the Americans saved their most impressive performance in Istanbul for the elimination stage, overwhelming the Angolans from the start after a couple of lackluster performances to close the group stage.
Eric Gordon and Rudy Gay also scored 17 for the Americans, who will face Russia on Thursday night. Gordon was 5 of 6 behind the arc.
"It was a different challenge tonight," U.S. assistant Nate McMillan said. "Their key guy didn't play tonight, so that took one of their options away, but it was about us. I thought we established ourselves early defensively as far as we wanted to play."
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