QUICK WRAP: Australia vs. Slovenia

Death

Like a fiery lamp at tribal council on a remote island in the Pacific, the Boomers hopes of medalling at the FIBA World Cup were snuffed out in a brutal and quick execution, 91-80 at the hands of their vanquished foes at the Tokyo Olympics, Luka Doncic and Slovenia.

Early signs weren’t great as Slovenia stole the opening tip and scored within four seconds, and then hit a wide open three to race to a 5-0 lead before Australia’s bench had barely sat down, but hey, early game, you can come back.

Narrator: The Boomers did not come back

Every issue the Boomers exhibited in the warm up tournament and first group stage came rushing to the fore against a relentless and crisp Slovenia side. They were physically outmatched inside, failing to establish any control of the defensive glass, while they couldn’t hit water if they fell off a boat on offense, a barrage of bricks enough to build a three bedroom house in Bondi.

When you come up against a star as bright as Luka Doncic, widely considered the best player at the World Cup, it’s always interesting to see how the team defends him. When a team has such an obvious focal point, there’s a wide variety of strategies you can employ to slow him down. As I wrote after the Japan game, I expected Australia to throw a ton of different looks at Doncic, including doubles, switches, traps, hard hedges and blitzes, and different primary defenders.

Sometimes it just doesn’t matter.

As expected, Josh Green took the first crack at his Dallas Mavericks teammate, but with a healthy mix of trapping involved. Every time the Slovenians would run a pick and roll, the roll man’s defender (more often than not Nick Kay) would blitz, meaning an aggressive double designed to get the ball out of Luka’s hands, and the defence would then rotate and fill the gaps.

The problem with that is when Doncic recognises that’s Plan A, it’s somewhat easy to combat, especially when you possess rare size for a point guard as he does at 6-foot-9.

All Doncic had to do was maintain poise in possession and string the Australian double team along, further and further away from the basket, to stretch the defence. Once the defence was sufficiently discombobulated, Luka would simply release and Slovenia would play a quick 4v3.

Sometimes it would be Mike Tobey open at the top of the key, other times it would be a quick swing to the weakside corner, but Slovenia were generating open shot after open shot. I mentioned briefly in the quick wrap after the Japan game that Slovenia love the pick and roll outside-in offense, and will shoot a lot of threes. Well, I was right, for once. Slovenia took 42 threes, making 13, as the Australian defence was in a state of permanent scramble.

For me, the key point in this game was the second quarter. Australia had played a disaster first quarter and were down 10, but a Luka technical foul early in the second quarter saw him sit with 3 fouls (techs count to the personal tally in FIBA play). Luka wouldn’t play for the rest of the first half, a prime opportunity to cut into the lead while the Slovenian talisman sat with foul trouble.

The Slovenian lead stretched to as much as 14 in the second quarter, but with Luka on the bench the Boomers managed to cut it to…9. After facing a Luka-less lineup for a solid 6-7 minutes, the Boomers made minimal headway on the quarter time lead. A real mental blow to not make bigger inroads against the Slovenian role players, one from which they never really recovered.

Josh Giddey has had an odd World Cup. He’s had rough starts to games, playing too fast, taking some mucky, tough shots inside and committing turnovers. He’s also largely bounced back in the second half, and this game was no different. Where the Boomers were failing to generate any real coherent and consistent offense, Giddey remembered he’s a huge point guard with elite ball handling, using his 6-foot-8 frame to get to the bucket at will.

He personally keyed the Boomers run in the third and early fourth quarter, getting the Boomers to within 2 points early in the final stanza.

Unfortunately, that’s as close as it would be, as Slovenia immediately peeled off a 15-2 run in response, killing the game and the Boomers hopes, consigning them to a tough post mortem as they pick up the pieces of a failed tournament and wonder wherre it all went wrong.

It was a night to forget for the Boomers. Nick Kay was victimised in pick and roll coverage when asked to defend in space, Xavier Cooks was hampered with foul trouble and struggled to impact like he did against Japan, and Joe Ingles only positive stat in 26 minutes was 2 assists, both of which came extremely late in his stint, and Patty Mills struggled to free himself all night, working extremely hard for a modicum of space to force a tough midrange shot.

BOOMER HIGHLIGHT

Josh Giddey continues to show those flashes of why this tournament wasn’t a total waste by getting him into the program.

25 points, 8 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 steals (but 6 turnovers) is a line we can expect a lot more of moving forward for Giddey. His third quarter in particular was a glimpse into how dominant he can be, forcing his way to wherever he wanted to go and scoring at will to keep Australia in the game.

The next challenge will be surrounding Giddey with a roster that allows him to flourish. It’s clear this team is stuck in between two styles and two eras, and Giddey struggled at times with the lack of spacing around him, so internal development on that front is critical moving forward.

DISLIKE

Where do I begin? The fact that this game was at 10PM AEST was a bad start. The lackadasical defence, the stagnant offense, the pitiful rebounding, all bad.

But I thought it was a pretty poor coaching job from Brian Goorjian in this one and I think some fair questions will be asked. Whether Cooks or Reath would’ve made a material difference is probably a moot point, but I thought Goorjian was rigid in his rotations, sticking with Kay and Ingles too long when it became clear the game wasn’t suited to them, especially defensively.

The inclusion of Chris Goulding in the squad too for the sole purpose of making shots, only to never play him when in desperate need of some instant offense (which was more often than ideal) is also baffling.

The defence, this team’s calling card, looked a step off. Some of that is personnel and chemistry, to be sure, but some of the soft switches pre-programmed into this team felt avoidable and this team has the capability to play straight up a lot more than it did.

All in all, a disappointing tournament on the sidelines as much as on the court.

BOX SCORE

NEXT GAME

Honestly who cares, but if you are a sicko who wants to put yourself through one more game of this pain…

Australia vs. Georgia, Sunday 3rd September, 5:30PM AEST

I mean, I’ll watch this game, but more out of obligation to see this tournament through at this point.

Georgia have a few NBA players like Alexander Mamukelashvili and Goga Bitadze, and gave the Boomers a close run in their final warmup game behind closed doors before the tournament, but on paper the Boomers should at least close out their World Cup with a win.

Either way, mercifully, the tournament is over after this game, just hope no one gets injured, regroup and try again in Paris at the Olympics.

#GoldVibesOnly

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If you missed it, I recorded a FIBA World Cup preview podcast for Beyond The Fence, focusing primarily on the Boomers and Group E, with Michael Houben from The Pick and Roll. It’s on all podcast platforms, go check it out.