Can The Australian Boomers Upset Team USA?
Can The Australian Boomers Upset Team USA?
This team of scrappy under-dogs has secured an impressive 2-0 start in Rio, but can they push past basketball behemoths Team USA?
This team of scrappy under-dogs has secured an impressive 2-0 start in Rio, but can they push past basketball behemoths Team USA?
The Boomers are so goddamn Australian right now it hurts.
Their impressive Olympic victories over France and Serbia, both ranked higher than them in international competition, have come from playing a working-class brand of basketball emphasising physical defence and junkyard hustle. Personified by this is team captain Andrew Bogut's leadership of the team, which at times can be either physical (like in the recent match against Serbia where Bogut played the role of Swiss-Army knife, scoring 9 points, 12 rebounds, 6 assists as well as 3 blocks) or emotional (like in this recent interview where he asserted the Boomers' success was due to their ability "to be defensive pricks").
That kind of fighting Aussie, under-dog spirit would make even Paul Hogan's eyes moisten.
We should be proud of our surprisingly-dominant Olympic start, but we should also be realistic about it. Up next on the Rio calendar is Team USA who, apart from an embarrassing defeat in 2004, have run a train on the men's basketball division for the past 2 decades.
There's just no one collection of talent that can legitimately compete with the collection of NBA All-Star-caliber players that the United States trots out every 4 years for international competition.
Even in 2004, it took a perfect storm of bad roster construction combined with a coach who refused to play rookies (that year, those rookies were Lebron, 'Melo and Wade) for Team USA to be humbled with the bronze medal, so it's unlikely that a misstep like that will happen again.
It is extremely unlikely, but not completely unfathomable, that the Boomers could beat Team USA.
For it to even be possible, the US team needs to make some crucial mistakes. First of all, Coach K needs to play Harrison Barnes a lot, which seems unlikely given his own predilection for running full-court presses when Team USA is up by 20+ points. Not only that, but ball movement on the US team needs to grind to a halt. If players can be isolated and even be put into foul trouble (hey there, Deandre!), that might mitigate some of the athleticism that Team USA has over Australia.
Which given our hard-nosed defence to date, could be a possibility.
The physicality of Bogut and Matthew Dellavedova needs to annoy Team USA to the point of missing shots and offensive movement becoming stagnant. We also need to hope like hell certain players have bad shooting nights, to boot. Our ball movement has been pretty good so far, and this needs to continue if we have a chance of toppling the Yanks. We just don't have the requisite offensive firepower necessary to win the game via scoring, so instead we need to make sure Team USA doesn't get buckets either.
This game needs to be very, very ugly (I'm talking "face like a dropped pie"-level) if the Aussies have a chance of winning it.
The Boomers are so goddamn Australian right now it hurts.
Their impressive Olympic victories over France and Serbia, both ranked higher than them in international competition, have come from playing a working-class brand of basketball emphasising physical defence and junkyard hustle. Personified by this is team captain Andrew Bogut's leadership of the team, which at times can be either physical (like in the recent match against Serbia where Bogut played the role of Swiss-Army knife, scoring 9 points, 12 rebounds, 6 assists as well as 3 blocks) or emotional (like in this recent interview where he asserted the Boomers' success was due to their ability "to be defensive pricks").
That kind of fighting Aussie, under-dog spirit would make even Paul Hogan's eyes moisten.
We should be proud of our surprisingly-dominant Olympic start, but we should also be realistic about it. Up next on the Rio calendar is Team USA who, apart from an embarrassing defeat in 2004, have run a train on the men's basketball division for the past 2 decades.
There's just no one collection of talent that can legitimately compete with the collection of NBA All-Star-caliber players that the United States trots out every 4 years for international competition.
Even in 2004, it took a perfect storm of bad roster construction combined with a coach who refused to play rookies (that year, those rookies were Lebron, 'Melo and Wade) for Team USA to be humbled with the bronze medal, so it's unlikely that a misstep like that will happen again.
It is extremely unlikely, but not completely unfathomable, that the Boomers could beat Team USA.
For it to even be possible, the US team needs to make some crucial mistakes. First of all, Coach K needs to play Harrison Barnes a lot, which seems unlikely given his own predilection for running full-court presses when Team USA is up by 20+ points. Not only that, but ball movement on the US team needs to grind to a halt. If players can be isolated and even be put into foul trouble (hey there, Deandre!), that might mitigate some of the athleticism that Team USA has over Australia.
Which given our hard-nosed defence to date, could be a possibility.
The physicality of Bogut and Matthew Dellavedova needs to annoy Team USA to the point of missing shots and offensive movement becoming stagnant. We also need to hope like hell certain players have bad shooting nights, to boot. Our ball movement has been pretty good so far, and this needs to continue if we have a chance of toppling the Yanks. We just don't have the requisite offensive firepower necessary to win the game via scoring, so instead we need to make sure Team USA doesn't get buckets either.
This game needs to be very, very ugly (I'm talking "face like a dropped pie"-level) if the Aussies have a chance of winning it.