I know a secret...the Boomers are playing in the World Cup next month

Actually, an NBA team vs Boomers would be a fairer match up. How good would a Spurs vs Boomers pre-season exhibition match be?

Basketball can achieve huge things in Australia or at least bring back 90s level success. Living in western Sydney I know almost as many passionate NBA followers as football followers. When Patty Mills and Aaron Baynes were in the city a few weeks back just for a store appearance there was a line going a km down the road in the middle of the work day. Exum and Bogut could demand similar levels of hysteria. Basketball needs to attack the right parts of Australian. I just don't think city centres are the right places. The suburbs are littered with basketball courts and awash with NBA jerseys. Chase that and make the most of it. How often can BA get these guys down to play in Aus? What are these guys usually doing June to October? A well-promoted Aussie NBA stars v NBL stars would fill any arena in Australia. The NBA could be packed with Aussie stars but that's of little or no value to BA if they have no way of showcasing them in Australia. During the darkest times of Aus football, we had a myriad of stars playing in the big European leagues but they were of no use to us all the way over there.

I second that, those vids are quite good.

We are never gong to get any high quality players play in the NBL because the league is strong but not enough publicity for a high profile player to come over here. Not like A-league where you can earn decent money too. NBL is different style - less one on one play.

A good summary of the situation with the overall poor recognition of the game in Australia. Im a long time hoops fan, but I now no longer expect any coverage from SBS,7, 9, 10 and ABC (even though the ABC are showing the event!). And I live in Perth where the game is quite strong here. Would hate to think what its like in the eastern states. It astounds me why no promotion has ever been put into the sport, and then the game gets ridiculed for being a game no-one cares about. Its pretty hard to care about a game if it no-one knows about it. What disappoints me is not the lack of media coverage (I've given up on that) but the lack of support from patriotic Australians who will get behind the Socceroos, Wallabies, Aust Cricket team etc because Australians are playing in an international competition, and not necessarily because they like the sport. Yet, they won't get behind the Boomers for the very same reason! Basketball is a sport thats more in line with hockey as far as profile goes. The Hockey world cup was recently on - around the same time as the soccer WC - but hardly anything was written about that. Basketball faces a similar fate - maybe even less due to the bad time zone. Good luck Boomers, I'll certainly be supporting them, even if the media won't.

Couldn't agree with you more. The BA website is a dog's breakfast. The only website I can think of that is worse is the FIBA one.

Bruce friendlies mean nothing. Soccer proves that. Friendlies mean nothing when the real show happens. Brazil had some big wins in soccer friendlies before the WC, look how that turned out. Mexico were lousy in qualifying but were strong in the real show.

Basketball Australia let my NBL team (the Blaze) down big time. I'm not sure I will ever fully forgive them for that. But the sentiments in this article are fairly off the mark. The latest Inside The Huddle series that Michael pointed out earlier is far better than any inner sanctum things that the Socceroos did. I also don't think the author looked closely enough at the BA website. More alarming are the results from the friendlies. Need to get more W's under the belt before the WC.

I actually agree. Basketball is the 2nd biggest team sport in the World, not Rugby or Cricket. It's weakness is that one country completely dominates the sport which devalues the international component.

FIFA - Federation of International FOOTBALL Associations. What do they call it at the Olympics - the FOOTBALL tournament. The best part is that it upsets AFL fans so that's even more reason to use it.

Other issue is, Basketball's international pinnacle is the Olympics, not it's World Cups/Championships. But this FIBA World Cup stuff, has alot of potential more so than the actual Olympics I reckon, just give it time, basketball is a developing international sport like rugby. -Basketball FIBA World Cup, 24-teams, increasing to 32-teams in 2019 FIBA World Cup. Olympics only allow 12-teams. So a host of good Euro-teams miss out every Olympics, and obscure African teams like Angola get a run, instead of Greece/Italy/Croatia etc. As Olympic qualifying offers alot of spots all over the World not to the best teams, so the star-studded Euro-Basket teams miss out. -32-Team WC format will work really well, and basketball is really developing in Europe. Teams like France,Finland,Germany,all improving. France has been good for a while, they won a silver medal at Sydney 2000 in men's basketball, beat the Boomers in the semi's. -Give it time this basketball WC format will work long term, this will be the last year, the basketball WC is held in the soccer WC year.

Ever heard of GPS rugby Chris. We want to get into high school schoolboy rugby more, but the old fashion headmasters won't allow it eg pay-tv deals etc, unlike in the states where high school basketball is on tv, Le Bron James in high school got massive tv ratings. NZ/STH Africa, with there high school rugby on tv. We have no Uni sports culture in OZ that's big which is a shame, accept the Syd Uni mafia who eat up all the best aussy rugby talent and enter it into the club shute shield. Only Uni club in the shute shield.

Agree with that, although I don't think you can find more on the BA website than you think, I have been there everyday over the lst couple of months and seen regular articles about the Boomers and Opals. Just a reminder that the ABC will be televising all of the Boomers and Opals games live for both World Cups (as well as Team USA's games. The Women's World Cup takes place a few weeks after the Men's. My face book feed form BA has been providing regular updates about the pre tournament tour the Boomers have been undertaking in Europe. Also the U17 World cup is also on in Dubai at the moment plenty about that on the BA website as well! The Goannas as they are known are doing pretty well. Into the Quarter Finals against Puerto Rico and on the good side of the bracket so that they don't meet the USA until the grand final. Big fella by the name of Humphries could well be tournament MVP if he keeps posting numbers like he has. ALl games are live on the FIBA Youtube channel too, as well as being available for replay.

Just rename the game "football", then stridently claim at every opportunity that it was always called football. That'll get some column inches.

I prefer nbl to nba ... just coz its our own comp. I like the euro structure coming in in recent years but the marque spots might help add some better quality and excitement. this world cup might have had more hype if patty and bogut were playing just a thought ... Bogut seems like a strong willed character and forthright ... I wonder if he has a prominent role in basketball admin in the future he might be able to use his profile and passion to be the catalyst for change and growth ala Lowy for football

There is much more interest in the US for this world cup, but mainly because Paul George broke his leg! Part of the problem for this tournament in both the US and Australia is the timing...In the US, the NFL will kick off during the tournament, and in Australia, the NRL and AFL finals will take place at the same time as this tournament is finishing up. It'll be hard forit to get much attention with all that going on. Also, the games will be televised in the middle of the night...Think the Boomers first game is at 2am! Hardly ideal...

Shucks...a bit jealous are we that our "hapless" Socceroos get more attention than Basketball in Australia? If more people cared then there would be more media exposure. I'll bet you any money you will get more "clicks" for this article from from football fans you've just insulted than actual basketball fans. BB's popularity was built on American style hype in the '90's which worked spectacularly well back then with all its glitter and fireworks. But at that time there was very little done to promote the "brand" of the national team and it was all about the NBL and it seemed the only times people cared was when the Olympics came around. Big mistake. The national team should always be the tip of the iceberg and hold more significance than the domestic competition but back then it was an afterthought and not much has changed. In terms of the popularity of the game as a whole in Australia....these days, most forms of US-style razzamatazz hype don't wash anymore in AUS and rightly or wrongly a lot of things "American" are on the nose worldwide in this day and age. This is one of BB's biggest hurdles and the game can only grow again in AUS if it markets itself to Australian audiences in a way that reflects Australian culture and tastes of 2014 and stops living in the bubble that is 1993.

Plainsman, I can offer a little bit of relief to your search. Basketball Australia's YouTube channel has actually been doing some really good behind-the-scenes stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bX0ii6g6iw

Probably largely because you can barely even recognise the NBL as the same sport as what's played in the NBA. The NBA is all about highlight reel plays and powerful athletes that make it interesting and exciting. If that's what people are getting into, then turning around and watching the NBL is a significant let-down. For all my lifetime at least, Australia has been a nation that for the most part really only cares about really good level of sport. Unlike the US where huge crowds turn out to High School and College sport, nobody would pay to go to such things here. That's one area where more international sports like Football can struggle compared to the NRL or AFL where nobody else really plays them making the local competition the best in the world. With TV these days meaning you can see any other competition around the world you want, if your local competition isn't the best, or even close to, then it can be hard to get as many people to turn out for the local content. With Basketball that's even more pronounced. You'll probably find there are a lot of Basketball fans in Australia who will follow the NBA closely but couldn't even tell you what all the teams are in the NBL, let alone any of the players, or who won the title last year. This flows on to anything outside the NBA when it comes to basketball, so even with a basketball World Cup coming up, all the basketball talk is around the build up to the start of the new NBA season. I actually think that those running BA have made a lot of big mistakes over the last 20 years that have resulted in the league going from it's popular status, games on commercial TV, decent crowds at games, all results showing on the news, to basically an irrelevant competition for most people in Australia.

Yeah I wrote about a very similar topic here a few weeks ago http://www.theroar.com.au/2014/07/17/time-right-australian-basketball-boom/ Would love to see more coverage of the World Cup here but as has been suggested the reality is that the event doesn't have enough profile. It does seem like there is buy-in from Team USA (despite the recent drop outs of Durant and Love) and a real hope that they can build the World Cup into pinnacle tournament. As a Canberra I was really disappointed that there was no public events for the team while they were in Canberra. From the outside its really seems like Basketball Australia needs communications overhaul.