It had been nice to start my earlier blogs saying what a great day it had been for basketball downunder. These last couple of days it hasn’t applied unfortunately.
For any Australian basketball fan it was very tough to sit through the defeat against Slovenia. A quick search shows it was the heaviest loss an Australian team has endured in the FIBA World Championship from an opponent not named the USA or the USSR.
Aussie journalist James Dampney said it felt like a 50-point loss, and it did. It was just one of those days.
Credit to the Aussie fans in the stadium who still had the ‘defence’ chant going late in the second quarter when Slovenia were about to double our score, and credit to the Aussie boys for fighting it out and keeping the score under 30, it couldn’t have been easy when everything just seemed to go wrong on the night.
Of course, there is plenty of analysis to be done on the Boomers performance here – both good and bad - but that is best saved for the cool light of day.
Most importantly though, Australian basketball fans shouldn’t lose hope, we have the talent to match it with some of the best teams in the world – the 2008 team showed that clearly, as did this team in patches. It was just one of those days today…
And while there have been some disappointing comments about the style of the NBL not being relevant to international basketball, the Tall Blacks have proven that the NBL hasn’t ‘gone out of style’ since Beijing with their quick ball and player movement, which had them third in scoring after the preliminary round, despite having five guys who didn’t play professionally last year!
It is good news to hear Jeremy Kench and particularly Lindsay Tait - who committed just one turnover per game in 26 minutes per game against the world’s best defences – are attracting some interest from NBL clubs.
Against Russia the Tall Blacks hung tough against a big and disciplined opponent. It was 38-35 to Russia with six minutes to play in the third, but shortly after Kirk Penney and Mika Vukona picked up their fourth fouls in quick succession. With them on the bench Russia peeled off a 13-0 run and the game was over.
NZ did close to eight at one stage in the last quarter but couldn’t mount a sustained run. Missing 19 of their 24 three point attempts killed them, and lots of them were good open looks – just one of those days I suppose.
But that didn’t stop Russian coach David Blatt saying some great things about the Kiwis, and particularly their offence which is similar to what you can see the Breakers run in the NBL, and not too distant from what the Townsville Crocs ran at the turn of the century.
”We held them to 56 when they usually score 85 a game, and that is no easy task against a well coached team that run offensive sets that a far more sophisticated than most teams here, and have a game-breaker like Kirk Penney,” Blatt said. “This team is capable of beating almost anyone here, including us.”
In fact, the overwhelming comments from basketball experts from other parts of the world have been in marvel of the NBL being home to such world class talents. The swarm of agents around the Tall Blacks the following day was confirmation of that.
The Tall Blacks had a different kind of brush with fame on the first night of the Eight Finals. Brought to see the Spain v Greece and Serbia v Croatia games by coach Nenad Vucinic to get a good look at the big stage they would soon be playing on, they were quick to spot Spike Lee in the crowd.
They weren’t shy in approaching him either, and Spike got a surprise. “They play basketball in New Zealand?” he asked amazed.
“Yeah, we’re the Tall Blacks,” the Kiwi boys responded.
Spike had a good look, had a think about it and said dryly: “No, you’re not the Tall Blacks, you’re the short whites!”
It seems even movie stars underestimated the New Zealanders here in Turkey!! Of course, given in the game against France their tallest starter was 198cm and France’s shortest was 195cm, Spike has a point.
I had the privilege of attending Boomers training on Saturday as they prepared for Slovenia. It was a great chance to see just how much Patrick Mills’ jump shot has improved, and how much concentration he puts into his shooting practice.
Blaze fans will be pleased to know that Adam Gibson also sets the standard with the amount of work he was doing on his shooting.
Mills barely missed a shot, and in the game play situation hit one of the sweetest high-arching fade-aways over Aleks Marc that you would ever see. It is great to see this development, and the next big step is developing as a point guard.
Interestingly enough, when I asked him if he missed having CJ Bruton around he said: “Oh yeah, I’ll always miss having him around, but at least I had one great opportunity to play with him in Beijing.”
The interesting part is that Patty is in constant contact with CJ after his games on Skype, discussing how he played and how he can improve his point guard play. With that sort of desire to improve it is hard to see Patty not going places.
My favourite quote from Patty though was when I asked if this tournament was a little different from 2008 when he was all bright eyed. He said: “I am still bright eyed! I walk in that lunch room and there is $1 billion in the room!”
It is easy to forget about that sometimes. And the world champs are great for showing that what you get paid is really irrelevant when you are on the same court.
Marcello Huertas was clearly the best guard on the floor in the Brazil v USA game, but his salary is dwarfed by his NBA counterparts. The German team’s pro salaries would probably run close to the $10 million mark, yet they lost to an Angolan team who all play their club ball in their home country.
This tournament certainly is the great leveller – although not in the Eight Finals for the Boomers or Tall Blacks. They just had one of those days….
