USA Basketball Team mini camp: SF Challenge

The USA Blue team edged the USA White 105-104 in the State Farm Challenge. Sunday’s game attracted an announced crowd of 15,132 to the Thomas & Mack Center on the campus of UNLV, and Bryant and James was clearly the crowd favorites. Bryant hit the game-winning shot over Tayshaun Prince with 6.6 seconds left to give the blue team a 105-104 victory over the white team Sunday in an intrasquad scrimmage. The play that got the crowd most charged up was when Bryant drove in on a break and tried for an up-and-under reverse dunk, only to have James block the shot and send Bryant flying into a row of photographers.

On the negative side, the teams combined to shoot only 19-for-68 on 3-pointers (28 percent) and 20-for-34 (59 percent) on free throws — the latter area coming as perhaps the biggest concern to Coach K, who lamented during the team’s three-day minicamp that foul shooting was one of the primary deficiencies to hamper Team USA at the World Championship in Japan last summer. Squads: White: Tayshaun Prince, Chauncey Billups, Shane Battier, Michael Redd, Jason Kidd, Chris Bosh, Dwight Howard, Mike Miller and LeBron James. Blue: Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire, Deron Williams, Tyson Chandler, J.J. Redick, Kobe Bryant, Kirk Hinrich and Kevin Durant.