Great article from Wall Street Journal on the Boomers. Written prior to our win against Lithuania.
Rio 2016: Australian Basketball Gets More Australian
The Boomers are in position to win a first-ever Olympic medal after embracing their basketball identity and adopting a tough, defensive approach
Australia’s Andrew Bogut and Carmelo Anthony of the U.S. jockey for position. PHOTO: ERIC GAY/ASSOCIATED PRESS
By
BEN COHEN
Aug. 16, 2016 6:56 p.m. ET
Rio de Janeiro
The last three NBA champions had some unbeatable advantages: the coaching of Gregg Popovich, the shooting of Stephen Curry, the existence of LeBron James. They also had Australians.
The Australians in the NBA are the guys who everyone wants on their teams partly because they don’t want them on anyone else’s. They tend to be selfless players who understand their roles—and their roles are to make the workplace more enjoyable for their colleagues and utterly miserable for opponents.
The Spurs benefited from Patty Mills tearing around on offense faster than almost anyone in the league. The Warriors had Andrew Bogut setting the vicious screens that were necessary for open 3-pointers. The Cavaliers were at their best with Matthew Dellavedova acting as the NBA’s foremost pest. Their play and personalities have shown it’s no coincidence that the best rosters, coaching staffs and front offices have at least some Australians.
But what if there were a basketball team made up of only Australians? It turns out there is one: the Australian basketball team.
The country that could beat the U.S. in the Olympics is a team with five NBA role players and seven more players who aren’t even in the NBA. But those 12 players happen to be Australians, which makes them a more troublesome proposition entirely.
As the knockout round at the Rio Games begins Wednesday, Australia is poised to win its first men’s basketball medal ever, mostly because they have completely embraced their country’s basketball identity. They take pride in being annoying.
“Before the tournament,” said Bogut, the team’s center, “we said that we need to be pricks defensively.”
In other words, Australia’s basketball team wanted to be more Australian.
It took decades for that idea to evolve, said Australian assistant coach Luc Longley. But the Australians realized before the Rio Games that defensive nastiness was essential to their plan.
“What that means is no easy layups,” he said. “It means guarding territory. It means busting through screens. It means not dropping your bundle when someone hits a couple shots.”
So far, Australia’s bundles have remained intact. The Boomers, as the team is known, finished the Olympic group stage with a 4-1 record, the best of anyone but the Americans, whom the Australians tested in a 98-88 loss last week, when it became clear they’re not intimidated by anyone in the field. They also have been pricks defensively. Australia ranks No. 2 in defensive efficiency, and the only reason Spain’s is better is they haven’t yet played Team USA.
The Australians have always believed they needed to play better defense than offense, Longley said. But it was especially crucial in the Olympics this year: Australia has to win with defense because it can’t win with offense.
In that way—and many others—they are the opposite of the American team that was undefeated but oddly unimpressive in group play. On the weekend of this year’s NBA All-Star Game, when most Team USA players were actually participating, the Australian players were busy partying on a boat. Now the Americans are living on a boat, and the Australians are packing into apartments that weren’t quite ready when they arrived. Bogut stringing together his own shower curtain may have been the perfect metaphor for the Australian style of basketball.
“We’re scrappy,” captain David Andersen said, “but we hold our own.”
The Australians understand why they weren’t predicted to leave with souvenirs around their necks. For one thing, they’re missing Ben Simmons and Dante Exum, NBA draft lottery picks who could be on the national team for years to come. The other reason, Bogut said, was rather simple. “We haven’t done crap over the last 20 to 30 years,” he said.
As soon as the Olympics began, though, the Boomers started to irritate everyone they played. Their tight game against Team USA had the American players leafing through a thesaurus for different ways to describe their style of play. They settled on chippy, physical and slightly dirty.
The Australians were not offended by those epithets. They were delighted. “If that’s what they think of us,” Mills said, “that’s perfect.”
Australians have their own word for that: Australian. What they appreciate about this team is that they can identify the values of their country right there on Rio’s basketball court. “Selflessness on offense and defending like they don’t want to let their mates down are very Australian qualities,” said Jim Chalmers, an Australian member of Parliament. “Culturally we like to be underdogs—and we especially like to stick it to teams and players with big reputations.”
That’s exactly what they can do now. Australia opens the Olympic knockout round against Lithuania on Wednesday. If they win, they get the winner of Croatia vs. Serbia on Friday to guarantee themselves a medal. If they win then, too, they could get the U.S. in the gold-medal game on Sunday. The Australians plan to be so busy until that day that manager Jonathan Grady set an automatic reply to all of his emails before the Games began.
“If your email does not directly relate to the Boomers’ pursuit of their first Olympic medal,” he wrote, “I will respond at the conclusion of the Olympic Games.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/rio-2016-australian-basketball-gets-more-australian-1471388161
