The Minnesota Lynx are on the prowl for a completion of a Texas two-step when they head to San Antonio on Tuesday for a road matchup with the struggling and shorthanded Stars.On paper, the game looks like a severe mismatch. After all the Lynx (16-4) are the defending WNBA champions and one of the leagues best teams this season while San Antonio (5-15) is languishing in last place in the Western Conference.The Lynx have stumbled over their past 10 games, going 6-4 in that stretch after starting the season with 10 consecutive victories. Included in the recent swoon was Thursdays 93-89 overtime loss to Connecticut, which (like San Antonio) has just five wins in 2016.Minnesota showed a return to dominance Sunday with 37-point victory against Dallas in which it outscored the Wings 40-4 in a stretch from mid-first quarter to mid-second.The mission (against Dallas) was not just to be good, or good enough, but to be great, Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said. We took that message and applied it in just about every facet of the game.Lindsay Whalen scored a season-high 22 points in the win, which saw five Minnesota players in double-figure scoring and the Lynx outrebounding Dallas 51-25.On Thursday in the loss to the Sun, Whalen became the first player in WNBA history to reach 5,000 points, 2,000 assists and 1,500 rebounds.I guess it means that Ive been playing a long time, Whalen said. Its pretty cool.San Antonio has lost its past two outings, including a 10-point road defeat at the hands of the New York Liberty on Sunday. Monique Currie led the Stars in New York with 17 points, while Sydney Colson scored a career-high 12. San Antonio has lost eight of its past 11 games.The Stars will be playing their fourth straight game without the services of leading scorer Kayla McBride, who broke her right foot last week and is out for the season.The Lynx handed San Antonio a 91-68 defeat on July 2 in Minneapolis in the two teams first matchup. NMD Sale .S. hockey team after paying his dues as an NHL general manager for more than three decades and giving up a lot of his free time to help USA Hockey. NMD Replica . Louis Rams wide receiver Stedman Bailey last Sunday. The fine is the fourth this season for Goldson. He was fined $30,000 for a hit on the New York Jets Jeff Cumberland in Week 1. https://www.cheapnmdoutlet.com/ . -- Damian Lillard and LaMarcus Alrdridge were again the go-to duo for the Trail Blazers against the Kings. NMD China . "I wrote 36 on my sheet at the beginning of the game," the Cincinnati coach said, referring the yard line the ball would need to be snapped from. NMD Clearance . This should be celebrated because it will not always be this way. With the amount of money given to players by their clubs these days, it is a wonder that so many of those teams allow the sport to continue to take away many of their assets so they can play for a different team in the middle of their season. RIO DE JANEIRO -- Some at-the-buzzer instant analysis from press row at the Carioca Arena 1 after Team USA followed up Wednesdays scare against Australia with a 94-91 escape against Serbia that featured its own fresh rash of uncomfortable moments for the tournaments heavy favorite:How It Happened: Team USA scored the games first nine points, bolted to a 24-7 lead and looked from the jump like a team determined to make Serbia pay for the close call endured by the Americans in their previous Group A game with the Aussies.The ball movement was crisper. The defensive intensity was palpable. The rout was on.These players never imagined, given how the evening began, that theyd find themselves in a one-possession game in the final five seconds and forced to sweat out an open wing 3-pointer from Bogdan Bogdanovic for the tie that mercifully bounced long off the rim.But Serbia has a proud, stubborn group of its own, led by crafty veteran guard Milos Teodosic. Coach Mike Krzyzewski has mentioned Teodosic seemingly almost every day since the Americans arrived in Rio ... and you saw plenty of examples why.Despite the considerable attention he was drawing from the Yanks D, Teodosic was at the heart of the ball-movement clinic that got the Serbs back in the game and -- in the greater concern for Krzyzewski -- kept them in it all the way to the buzzer despite the two very quick fouls star center Miroslav Raduljica picked up early in the second half.For all the raves about this groups defensive prowess, Team USA struggled for the second straight game to cope with an offense that lets all five players touch the ball and features copious amounts of movement. Deep in the shot clock, guarding multiple actions is proving problematic far too often for a team with the Americans gold-or-bust aspirations.The decision by Serbia coach Sasha Djordjevic not to pull Raduljica after his third foul seemed disastrous when the former Milwaukee Bucks and Minnesota Timberwolves big man picked up No. 4 all of three seconds later, with a whopping 8:41 to go in the third quarter.It was two DeAndre Jordan free throws -- believe it or not -- in the final minute of the third that briefly got the lead back to double digits (71-60). But Serbia -- with Denver Nuggets big man Nikola Jokic ably filling the void created by Raduljicas absence -- simply wouldnt go away.The game stayed in single digits for much of the final period, despite some quality contributions from DeMar DeRozan (11 points) in a rare opportunity alongside starters Kyrie Irving, Paul George, Kevin Durant and Carmelo Anthony in a small-ball unit.Krzyzewski then let Draymond Green finish the game with that quartet as his small-ball center and that group hung on -- barely. Teodosic drew Serbia to within 94-91 by sinking a couple of free throws with 1:18 left, but the Americans escaped when Jokic missed a wild bank shot after Serbias excellent D lulled Irving into an iso-ball miss, followed by the errant triple from Bogdanovic.Irving was Team USAs top scorer with 15 points, with Jordan chipping in 13 and Durant, George and Anthony scoring 12 each.Jokic scored a team-best 25 points for the Serbs, Raduljica had 18 points before fouling out and Teodosic scored 18.The Streak: Thats now 72 wins in a row and counting for Krzyzewski and Team USA; 20 consecutive victories in Olympic play, 19 in FIBA World Cup tournaments, 10 in Olympic qualifiers and another 23 wins in exhibition games. The Americans previously tasted defeat in the semifinals of the 2006 FIBA World Championship against Greece and launched this streak on Sept. 2, 2006, with a 96-81 victory over Argentina in the bronze-medal game in Japan.Plaay Of The Game: The bucket, in truth, probably shouldnt have counted.ddddddddddddDeMarcus Cousins sure looked as if ?he traveled before the fancy 360 spin at midcourt that left Teodosic in the dust and enabled Cousins -- at 6-foot-11 and 270 pounds -- to sail in for an uncontested to dunk after his guard-worthy pirouette for an 8-0 Team USA lead.But if they didnt call it ... why not savor the spectacle?Rest assured that Cousins, after picking up two fouls in less than three minutes in each of the last two games, surely enjoyed the moment. He actually racked up nine fouls in less than 19 minutes in those two outings, but Boogie made it all the way to the third quarter before picking up his first Friday night, thus keeping Serbia high on the list of Cousins favorite all-time opponents in the pros.The way he changed the game against the Serbs in the 2014 FIBA World Cup final in Spain remains Cousins finest hour in a national team jersey, yet this was an important performance, too. Krzyzewski sees Cousins as a critical component of this team and told him so after the struggles with foul trouble.The Sacramento Kings center totaled five points and three rebounds -- but only two fouls -- in 21 minutes.Krzyzewski said of the advice he gave Cousins: I said, Look,youre a human being, you should be frustrated. [But] lets just move on to the next thing and see if we can handle that going forward, because we need you. In the amount of minutes hes been in there, hes performed very well. We need him to play more.Numbers Game: The United States extends its win streak to 72, but this was one of its closest calls during the streak. Its just the fourth time during those 72 games that they won by five or fewer points.Fresh off becoming the all-time leading mens scorer in U.S. Olympic history, Anthony showed up for work Friday needing 24 rebounds to surpass David Robinson as Team USAs all-time top boards man.He wound up pulling in three rebounds against the Serbs, leaving him 21 shy.The current leaderboard:Krzyzewski said coming into the Serbia game that he didnt want to make a change at center in the starting lineup because he wanted Cousins, despite his foul trouble throughout the tournament, to try to adapt to how tightly games are being called in Rio.But Klay Thompson, one of Krzyzewskis favorites dating to the 2014 FIBA World Cup in Spain, came off the bench for the second straight game as he tries to find his shot after some serious struggles through Team USAs first three games.Thompson shot 3-for-20 from the field, including a frigid 2-for-13 from 3-point range, in his first three games in Rio. In nine minutes Friday night, Thompson didnt fare much better, going 1-for-6, his only make a 3-pointer on three attempts from beyond the arc.Durant needed 21 points against Serbia to pass Charles Barkley for the fifth-highest total in U.S. Olympic history. He wound up with 12.Whats Next: The Americans play France on Sunday in their first afternoon game of these Olympics and their final Group A game.Yet even at 4-0, Team USA hasnt clinched first place in the group yet. The Tony Parker-led French could still force a three-way tie at the top, provided they beat Venezuela later Friday night and upset the United States in Sundays finale.In the unlikely event France manufactures that upset and forces a three-way tie atop the group, scoring differential between the tied teams will be used as the tiebreaker to seed the top three nations in Group A. The top four teams from the group advanced to next weeks quarterfinals. ' ' '
