FIBA Worlds Daily Three: Durant deserves a hand

U.S. 89, Russia 79 (Food analogy warning). On Wednesday, the verbal spat between Team USA's Mike Krzyzewski and Russia's David Blatt became heated enough to boil tortellini. On Thursday, Kevin Durant turned Russia's defense into parmesan cheese. (You were warned.) In his most efficient game of the tournament thus far, Durant shot 11-for-19 from the field and 8-for-9 from the free throw line en route to 33 points. Of course, if you want to nitpick, he did come up short in two notable departments: 1) With just three more points, he would have surpassed Carmelo Anthony's Team USA single-game world championship record of 35 points; 2) With five more points, he would have hit the magic number 38, which happens to be the exact number of years to the day since the 1972 Olympic final, which got this whole Coach K-Blatt rift simmering in the first place.

Important announcement: Scola is canceled. It has been a truly glorious tournament run for long-maned Argentine scoring machine Luis Scola, who came into Thursday's quarterfinal against Lithuania averaging a hearty - nay, robust - 30.3 points per game. Sadly, this run was not ticketed for the semifinals. Argentina was soundly throttled (104-85) behind an extremely balanced Lithuanian attack (seven players in double figures), while Scola's streak of five straight 30-point games ended with an anticlimactic 13-point farewell.

See you this weekend. Saturday's semifinals are now officially set, with Serbia taking on a not-joking-around Turkish squad while the U.S. faces off against an also-not-joking-around Lithuania. Now 7-0 in the tournament, Lithuania had near-losses to Canada and Spain early on, but has won its last four games by an average of 15.5 points. Another fact to know about Team Lithuania: Every player on the roster has a last name ending with "S", except for one - and he happens to be the most important player on the team. That would be former Denver Nugget and current Toronto Raptor Linas Kleiza, averaging a team-leading (and sixth-best in the tournament) 19.1 points per game. Of course, Kleiza having an "A" as opposed to an "S" reinforces an age-old basketball principle: the guy who has a different jersey than everyone else is more often than not a ringer.