BEIJING (Olympics) - It's odd how some teams and players seem more comfortable facing certain opponents.

Example Pau Gasol who dominates Fiba play but really seems to shy away and go into his shell vs big, tough USA players.

In the NBA and vs team USA in Athens and then here on saturday, this was the case.

He started off the game with 3 turnovers and never looked as dominating as he did in the other games and his teammates followed his soft, grimacing lead!

When Pau puts on that pained expression, Spain is gonna lose!

OK, Greece and Spain hid their defensive game plan by playing alot of zone and the pressure of the knockout round should provide some closer games for team USA, but for me, the americans are just maybe not a good matchup for Spain in the end.

Spain beats Argentina and Greece regularly and probably likes those matchups.

Greece had to shoot 63 percent and come back from 14 down to beat the USA in Japan but in general, the greeks probably prefer playing someone else like France or Croatia for instance.

Lithuania is another team the greeks don't match up well with and the Argentinians probably don't like playing Lithuania either!

So if Spain and Greece can't bother team USA, maybe Lithuania and Argentina can.

They both beat the 2004 squad in Athens.

With the « Ginobili team » - I think he's a player-coach here in Bejing-anything is possible because they have the « grinta » Spain was lacking on saturday evening.

They'll probably wear down in the end because they have no bench but their shared experience and Manu's return to form are reasons to hope, if they get past Greece in the quarter-finals.

In fact that should be the closest, most exciting game of all the quarter-finals, the other three strike me as being more one-sided.

The semis should be extraordinary with USA-Argentina, a new payback game after the 2004 semi-final loss for the redeem the dream team, and Lithuania-Spain, a toss-up between two brillant offensive machines with few weaknesses that play the same uptempo, hot-shooting, crisp passing style.

I wonder if Spain isn't missing some of the emotion and role definition that Pepu brought to the team and obviously Garbajosa is no longer the player he in Japan because of his serious leg injury, so Lithuania might be able to eliminate the world champs behind Jasi's ballsy leadership.

This would produce a fourth payback game for the USA vs Lithuania in the final,a wonderful hollywood type scenario, and set the stage for Lebron and Wade to propulse their team to gold medal heaven like a two-stage rocket taking off from cape canaveral! Yes, I am wavering on my original prediction but that 37 point loss by Spain took their wind out of my sails.

If they were playing possum and it was just a bluff, then they succeeded in bluffing me!

George EDDY