Hoops

2016 Olympic Boomers team.

Not Gibson, not Wortho, and probably not Newley.

Don't forget, we're talking about a Newley four years older and a lot slower

With the extra games and possible travel, there will be more expenses. I'm not sure how FIBA is contributing to this either...but I guess with more meaningful Boomers games on home soil, this increases brand awareness, marketability and possibly sponsorship and a media deal of some kind. Whether this brings in significant dollars or not it is too early to tell.

But the major positive is meaningful Australian games frequently - something we have never really had before unlike to the European and South American teams. This can only be good for developing the Boomers squad of players and helping develop a style that better suits our players and talent.

LC, will BA be able to afford all those games and all that travel?

I think we will have a very good balance of players come 2016 should we qualify of course, some of whom should be reaching the prime of their careers.

It is worth noting that I think Australia will benefit from the new FIBA qualification system once it commences...

The below is a summary that Paul put together some time ago about the FIBA changes to their Olympic and World Champ schedule...

- The new Basketball World Cup (to replace the World Championships) will be expanded to field 32 teams
- Qualification to be home and away series (similar to FIFA)
- Calender to run Olympics 2016, zone championship 2017, women's world champs 2018, men's world cup 2019
- Likely to mean that qualification to the Olympics will be primarily through the World Cup

Importantly under the new system of competition, there can be up to 1,600 games played by up to 130 national federations over a period of 18 to 24 months. This is double the number of national teams that are currently involved in the qualifying process for FIBA's leading international tournaments. And for us, this means seeing the Boomers and Opals play regular home and away games every year - something we only get to see against NZ when qualifying for WC's and Olympics.

In addition, as the strength of international teams is based in Europe, often some fo the best teams miss out on the WC's and Olympics due to lack of places. Under the proposed changes, FIBA Basketball World Cup will consist of 32 teams, thereby allowing for good representation for every continent. For example, you could have 12-14 European teams that qualify for FIBA’s flagship event. To me this ensures the best of the best which is what the World cup should be about.

What about Kyrie Irving? (unless he wants to play for team USA) i dont see why we cant have him in 2016?

Hopefully Brown doesn't re-apply for the job cos he's been disgraceful as coach! I'd love to see Lemanis given a shot and then worry about the team from there. No good having a gun team if the coach doesn't use the players effectively or is too scared to mix it up a bit and play some bench players looking for a spark when you start to get down by 10+
A good coach is willing to take a chance and see what might/could happen

I agree, Curtley - the Spanish seemed to know where to go each time, played as a team rather than as a bunch of individuals, had no trouble finding the easy scoring option, and scored.

Spain had good coaching of good players, playing as a team. We had an NBA coach trying to get us playing NBA ball, which doesn't suit many of the current team.

Hopefully next Olympics we have a better match between coach and players. Either get a Euro-style coach and play a Euro-style game, which seems to suit us better, or keep Brett Brown and pick more college kids to play an NBA style.

I still believe AJ Ogilvy can play. dont know why he didnt enter the draft after his freshman year when he was picked to be a lottery pick. He has suffered from injury set backs in the past 2 years. I wouldnt rule him out just yet. I hope Dante Exum and Drmic can develop into really good players. maybe by 2016 Anatoly Bose will improve and would probably be a better pick then Barlow. Would be great if Ben Simmons had a 3 or 4 inch growth spurt and become a dominate athletic big man for us. i heard he was super impressive recently in the US.

Obviously I'm having a laugh... So gutted with the game tonight, I know Spain are gun, but we just had no offense, tough to watch. Hopefully we can turn it around for China.

Ps Exum looks the goods

Can we get some big units from the Congo to become Australian natives? Eg Serge Ibaka's twin brother

Can the AFL not take all our big young athletic talented sportsmen - we need some players, I hear the AFL get all the talent down south

Prerequisite for the team;
1 - have a few players who can shoot 75% from F/T line (we missed so many tonight)
2 - have a couple of 3 PT bombers on the floor (gaze should suit up for rest of Olympics, who cares that he's 50, he can shoot it!!)