FIBA Worlds Daily Three: Luis Scola's tour de force

Luis Scola, basket-weaver. Anyone who has watched him play for the Rockets knows that Luis Scola's game is largely crafted around finesse (and we're not just talking about the brand of shampoo he probably puts in his hair). Scola runs the floor well, has a reliable jumper and consistently gets into the right spot to finish a short hook shot or a finger roll. Which is all a lengthy way of saying that there's really not a lot of power to his game, which is okay, because the sheer weight of his numbers at 2010 Worlds has been forceful enough. After scoring a tournament-high 37 in Tuesday's Round of 16 win over Brazil, Scola has now topped 30 points in five straight games, raising his Worlds-leading average to 30.3 points per game.

Kleiza scores 30, draws comparisons to Peanuts. The most famous Linus we can think of had the last name Van Pelt and toted a security blanket. But on Sept. 7, 2010, Linus from Peanuts had no choice but to tip his cap to Mr. Linas Kleiza of Lithuania, who had Team China's defenders wondering if they could get security blankets of their own after his 30-point eruption on Tuesday. Kleiza now carries an average of 19.5 points per game (fifth-best in the tournament) into the quarterfinals, where he and 6-0 Lithuania face off against Argentina, which has no players with any connection we're aware of to the work of Charles Schulz.

Oh no Yi didn't / oh yes Yi did. The loss to Lithuania hereby ends a standout tournament for Yi Jianlian, who deployed fiercely-groomed armpits and some uncharacteristic consistency en route to 20.2 points per game (third-best in the tournament so far) and 10.2 rebounds per game (tops among all players). That inspired play unfortunately only led to one win for China, but Yi looks ready to carry this momentum into what could be a breakout NBA campaign, assuming of course that he can mesh well with The Great Wall (new teammate and Wizards franchise hope John Wall, that is).