The Australian Boomers has named one of its most exciting and talented basketball squads to date, with the team leaving on Tuesday for Europe to begin their 2014 FIBA World Cup campaign.
Last week, Boomers coach Andrej Lemanis announced the final 12-man squad for upcoming tournament in Spain. The squad is headlined by San Antonio Spurs NBA title-winner Aron Baynes, Cleveland Cavaliers guard Matthew Dellavedova and 2014 draftees Dante Exum (Utah Jazz) and Cameron Bairstow (Chicago Bulls).
Ten out of the twelve selected players in the squad boast NBA experience or have tried out with teams in the NBA Summer League.
This is testament to the strength and depth of the current squad, which does not include Australia’s two biggest NBA stars – Spurs point guard Patty Mills and Golden State Warriors centre Andrew Bogut, who will both miss the tournament due to injury.
Three-time Olympian and former Houston Rockets player David Andersen will play in his fifth major international tournament for Australia, alongside fellow experienced leaders Joe Ingles and Brad Newley.
Six players will be making their major tournament debuts for the Boomers, including Bairstow and Exum, as well as NBA prospect Brock Motum.
Not since the days of Shane Heal, Andrew Gaze and Luc Longley have we seen such an exciting pool of Australian basketball talent.
Lemanis signaled the Boomer’s intent to chase a medal at the championships, leaving out exciting prospect Ben Simmons from the World Cup squad. The 18-year-old is tipped to be a future NBA first-round draft pick after committing to Louisiana State University – the college that produced Shaquille O’Neal.
“Really disappointed didn’t make the Worlds Team, Good luck to all the guys who did #grindtime,” Simmons wrote on Twitter.
To add to the hype surrounding Simmons, Thon Maker, a seven-foot-one Sudanese-born Australian, is turning heads in the US and has received several offers from the country’s top basketball universities, only adding more excitement to the future of Australian basketball.
Despite this, with Adam Gibson the only player selected from Australia’s national competition the NBL, there are fears the Boomers squad will now consist of only overseas-based players, leaving the domestic competition void of high-level Australian talent.
However, similar to how the A-League built on the momentum of the Socceroos 2006 World Cup campaign, the forthcoming boom for Australian basketball should invigorate a new set of fans that the NBL and Basketball Australia must capitalise on.
While we have to be patient and understand this process will not happen over night, Baynes and Mills recently took the NBA Championship trophy on a tour of Australia, last week Dante Exum dropped into a Melbourne Footlocker store and the Boomers just acquired a new naming rights sponsor in Air BnB.
All this suggests we have begun to move in the right direction.
Coming off the back of what has been a tough period for the NBL, current CEO Fraser Neill needs to continually work on a refreshing approach to Australian basketball that captures national traction and hype.
With the tournament to be televised free-to-air, if this talented Boomers outfit performs well in Spain it could represent the first small step towards returning the NBL to its former glory.
Upon arrival in Europe, the Boomers will take on Finland in Helsinki, before travelling to Nice for clashes with France, Ukraine and the Philippines, and then a final two-game stop in Strasbourg.
The Boomers official World Cup campaign starts on August 31 against Slovenia in the Canary Islands. Other teams in their group include Angola, South Korea, Lithuania and Mexico.
Make sure you watch this tournament as it may just mark the beginning of the most exciting period in Australian basketball history.
Boomers World Cup team: Cameron Bairstow (Chicago Bulls, NBA), Aron Baynes (San Antonio Spurs, NBA), Matthew Dellavedova (Cleveland Cavaliers, NBA), Dante Exum (Utah Jazz, NBA), David Andersen (Strasbourg, France), Ryan Broekhoff (Besiktas, Turkey), Adam Gibson (Adelaide 36ers, NBL), Chris Goulding (CAI Zaragoza, Spain), Joe Ingles (Maccabi Tel-Aviv, Israel), Nathan Jawai (Galatasaray, Turkey), Brock Motum (Bologna, Italy), Brad Newley (Gran Canaria, Spain).
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