Eric Gordon: We have enough talent to win every game

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Eric Gordon, the Clippers’ shooting guard and a reserve on Team USA, will be a guest blogger for the Fabulous Forum during the FIBA World Championship tournament. Eric scored 16 points to lead Team USA to a 106-78 victory over Croatia on Saturday. Here are his impressions of the trip to Turkey and Saturday’s game:

This is my first time around the Europe area. I’ve been to Asia before, playing in China and Japan. It’s hard to adjust to the time zones as you travel. We’ve been in Europe for the last three weeks, but I’m still trying to make an effort to get some sleep.

It’s difficult finding time to rest. You want to sleep during the day and not at night. That’s the only thing that’s really difficult to get used to. You just try to get on a schedule and get your rest.

I’m trying to be consistent every practice, every game. I’m trying to help this team win however I can. I’m feeling comfortable at this point, just trying to help the team win every game however I can.

The coaching staff has done a good job preparing us. To win every game, we have to be unselfish and play as a unit. We’re not afraid that we might be one of the smallest teams here; that might actually be an advantage for us, to use our speed and quickness. We’re really effective in transition and the open court, and I think we can take advantage of our speed against some of the bigger teams.

I’m trying to be locked in and whenever I shoot the ball just concentrate on making every shot. We really put it away in the third quarter against Croatia. We had spurts in the first half, but we let them back into the game. In the third quarter we got on some runs and it was over.

We’ll have to step it up a little against Slovenia [on Sunday] and Brazil [on Monday], especially on defense. We have to keep on playing hard. We have enough talent to win every game.--Eric Gordon