Spain's basketball team said it was "devastated" and "frustrated" after a crushing 119-82 defeat Saturday against the US Dream Team. ( dpa )
"They have devastated us," Spain's basketball coach Aito Garcia Reneses said after the game at the Beijing Olympics.
World champion and Spain's superstar Pau Gasol was equally frank in his analysis of the match. "We are frustrated, we could not respond," the LA Lakers forward said.
Garcia Reneses tried to draw lessons from the defeat: "What is clearest to me from all this is that we will have to play more aggressively next time. They have devastated us. Our players were not at their level," he said.
The coach also cited an attitude problem in the beginning of the game, with which he was "not at all happy." He said: "We did not reach the concentration we needed. In truth we never found it, but it is more serious at the start."
Gasol, while admitting to the overwhelming superiority of the Dream Team, tried to look ahead.
"It is a good lesson for the future, to learn what we have to do. because we did not do it today (Saturday)," he said.
"They played more intensely. It is very hard to play against the United States. Now they have a much better-prepared team than at the 2006 World Championship."
Garcia Reneses' men, who had won their first three games in Beijing, are set to play Angola on Monday, at the end of the first round of the Olympic basketball tournament.
Whatever happens on Monday, Spain will finish the group stage in second place.