QUICK WRAP: Australia vs. Serbia

Do you want to know how I got these scars?

Let me preface this entire piece with what I think would be the measured and objective analysis of this game.

Serbia are ranked 4th in the world, with the two best players in this matchup in Nikola Jokic and Bogdan Bogdanovic, and I don’t think it’s particularly close. You can argue the ceiling of Josh Giddey and what he can become, but to win one game right now at this point of their respective careers, Bogdanovic is a more polished product.

Serbia were favourites in this game, with their two-pronged star approach and their militia of catch and shoot marksmen. Their style of play is more entrenched and sustainable, their roster more settled and in its prime, led by a three-time NBA MVP.

Ok now the rational thinking is out of the way, this one stings, and I have no issues calling it a choke job.

Objectively, a 24 point lead in a 40 minute FIBA game is a position that you should win from 98% of the time, especially between two teams that aren’t exactly gulfs apart in terms of quality from top to bottom of the overall rosters. Yes Jokic is the best player in the world, or at worst top three, but Australia’s rotation is hardly orders of magnitude worse than Serbia’s (although I will accept arguments this game was lost at the selection table several weeks prior), and certainly not 19 points worse over the course of 35 minutes.

I could have accepted a loss to Serbia pregame. In fact, if you’ve been reading my thoughts this Olympic cycle, you would know I was kind of down on this roster and thought we’d struggle to make it out of the group, even with the promise shown during the exhibition games. This is a roster of role players and ageing veterans led by a kid that could hopefully one day transform into a star of the international game. A team very much in a continued transition phase that has lagged beyond the World Cup last year and into this Olympic year.

I could have accepted if Serbia had blown the Boomers out of the arena early with a juggernaut offense centred around Nikola Jokic picking apart double teams with his patented cross court passing ability. I could have accepted a close fight that was decided in the clutch because the best player in the world decided to make key plays down the stretch that no one else can.

It’s not the result that irks me so much as it is the manner, and the speed, of the collapse.

Yes the offense was more than nuclear in the first half, but there was a general acceptance that the level of shotmaking was somewhat unsustainable, especially considering the manner in which FIBA Patty Mills showed up one last time, with an absurd arsenal of shotmaking not seen since the bronze medal match against Slovenia three years ago.

I’d accepted the shotmaking was going to regress closer to the mean in the second half. 54 points in the first half for the second worst offense in the tournament was always fraught with danger, but the way the team fell apart in the second half was alarming, if not, in hindsight, unsurprising.

It started, as usual, with the turnovers. This Boomers team has been exceptionally turnover prone through the course of the tournament, struggling to deal with overly physical defence and presses at full or three-quarter court, a phenomenon that came to the fore in the second half against Canada and continued right through to the final inbounds turnover in overtime against Serbia.

Through one quarter, the Boomers had committed just two turnovers, as the offense was executed decisively and swiftly, coupled with some strangely passive Serbian defence. By the end of the game, that number had ballooned to 20 as Serbia dialed up the pressure, fuelled in part to an almighty bake delivered by coach Svetislav Pesic (will pay for the full translation of that timeout rant).

The carelessness exhibited with ball in hand in the second half was the magnum opus of a disastrous ball handling campaign for the Boomers. The team committed 70 turnovers over the course of the tournament, against only 79 assists. That’s a 1.13 assists to turnovers ratio which, to be polite, is utterly putrid.

Not only was the volume of turnovers inexcusable, but the manner in which they came about was reflective of the overall offensive struggles of the team when things began to snowball.

Relying on an isolation-heavy style of play that relied on Patty Mills turning back the clock to something closer resembling his form in Rio 2016, with a lack of ball movement contributing in defences packing the paint and sending doubles to both him and Giddey, the two of them combining for half of the team’s total turnover amount.

Outside of the isolation play style, Australia’s ball handlers also looked weak at times. I lost count of the amount of times the lead guard would dribble up the sideline and be meekly forced out of bounds, or pick up their dribble in a bad spot in a panic, before hoisting a prayer pass to hope for the best. Once teams figured out you could apply little more than a tokenistic halfcourt or fullcourt press against the Boomers, the ball handling and offensive structure fell off a cliff.

The other major gripe a lot of people had over the course of the tournament was the rotations and lineups, but I actually think this was one of Brian Goorjian’s better managed games from that perspective.

For one, I’m glad they moved away from the Nick Kay minutes. Kay was inserted into the starting lineup pre-tournament to provide some semblance of size and shooting ability, a nice enough theory that unravelled as it became clear he’d lost a significant step since his contributions in Tokyo.

Considering Kay was maybe the best shooter in theory in the starting group outside of Patty, the fact he did not hit a three the entire tournament, while also only pulling in 12 total rebounds, meant he became unplayable against both smaller, athletic teams, and teams that play inside-out. Serbia fit the latter mould with Jokic’s post ability as a scorer and passer, so Kay getting his minutes slashed right down to 8 was the right call.

The minutes behind Jock Landale also continued to be a problem and that was no different here, although Jock himself didn’t have a banner game, fouling out with only five points and six boards, but it was clear through the Olympics that the coaching staff never settled on their backup big man.

Will Magnay got some run against Jokic and was predictably brutalised, while Duop Reath split time between the four and five, combining some nice offensive touches with baffling defensive deficiency. This team needed another big to step up and be a plus rebounder, and none of Kay, Magnay and Reath were able to do that, and the failures to close out numerous defensive possessions stymied some overall positive defensive growth in this game.

My other main beef from the rotation in this one was Josh Green losing his entire allotment of minutes for Matthew Dellavedova based on Delly’s spark plug contributions against Greece.

I’ll admit, Delly was better than I expected him to be both against Greece and then initially here against Serbia, but it felt like Goorjian went back to the well too often and Delly’s influence became too great on the flow of the game from a negative point of view.

Delly has never been an elite ball handler or shooter, certainly passable in both aspects back in his prime but in his diminished ability nowadays, his lack of burst really came to the fore. I recognise the value he brought in his minutes, but it did feel over-extended at times. As for subbing him in as a specialist defender, that I didn’t understand at all. Even if you don’t want to play Josh Green, Dyson Daniels only had 20 minutes, he felt underplayed.

In the end though, this game came down to an NBA MVP making plays in the clutch, including a key (and legal) basket interference, swiping away a Mills layup that would’ve pushed the lead to five in OT, and maybe the Boomers hold on. Couple that with two key buckets, including a patented Sombor Shuffle and a baby hook, and Australia’s rushed offense in the final stanza, and the Boomers are on the flight home.

It’s the fact that this game shouldn’t have even had a clutch period with some better in game management that will hurt Boomers fans for a while.

BOOMER HIGHLIGHT

Before I get into what I want to talk about in here, a quick shout out again to Dante Exum. His role on this team is immensely important, and he provided another steadying presence with 12 points and five assists in 27 minutes off the bench.

When Giddey and Mills began to struggle, Exum helped keep the team afloat and managed to avoid letting go of the rope completely.

Also shoutout to Jack McVeigh’s big shot ability. He’s a rare unit behind the keyboard, it’s true, but the Boomers would’ve been sunk much sooner without some of his huge threes.

But it’s time to talk about Patty Mills.

That first half is some of the most ridiculous shotmaking I have ever seen in my 20+ years of watching the sport, at any level. Were they mostly what a coach would call bad shots? Yes, undoubtedly, but at this point of the tournament it was clear the team was willing to ride Patty’s aura in the hopes he would tap into that FIBA Patty vein one last time.

This game felt like a perfect sign off from that point of view. Mills’ athleticism may have diminished to the point now where he struggles to create constant separation off the dribble, but he managed to wind the clock back in a vintage first half show that had the entire bag of tricks going, from spinning reverse layups to midrange gambits from behind the backboard and even a three or two from the seat of his pants.

Considering this is likely Mills’ last international tournament in the green and gold (although I wouldn’t completely rule him out just yet given the ages of guys like Rudy Fernandez and Marcelo Huertas in these Olympics), it felt right that we got one last incandescent display of the superhero that is FIBA Patty Mills.

DISLIKE

The ball handling deserves a second mention because it was just so hopelessly brutal throughout the entire tournament, but especially in the second half here. When the team committed one turnover, several more seemed to follow, giving undeserved credence to the old park cricket adage that “one brings two.”

Josh Giddey was perhaps the biggest culprit in all of this, finishing with 20 of the Boomers 70 total turnovers, including 7 in this game alone. Giddey is obviously the great hope of the future Boomers generation, and he dazzled with some of his play at the Olympics, but he also showed his youth and naivety with some of his decision making at times.

Whether it was an ill-advised push ahead in transition without a clear advantage or dribbling into trouble behind the backboard, these are the nuances of point guard play that Giddey will get ample opportunity to iron out in the NBA badlands of the 2024-25 Chicago Bulls (who are projected to majorly suck).

The good news is Giddey will be just 25 when LA 2028 rolls around, so we haven’t seen close to the best of him yet you’d think.

BOX SCORE

A NOTE FROM ME

Thank you for reading The Antisocial Basketballer for these Olympics. I’ll have some more extended thoughts on specific aspects of the roster in the coming days and weeks, especially how the team moves forward and builds around its young core, so stay tuned for that in your inboxes if you’re a subscriber.

Also keep an eye on the Beyond the Fence podcast feed, we’ll have a post-Olympic reaction podcast for the Boomers and Opals coming soon too.

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Gold vibes only, onwards to Los Angeles.