Australia | |||
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FIBA ranking | 11 1 | ||
Joined FIBA | 1947 | ||
FIBA zone | FIBA Oceania | ||
National federation | Basketball Australia | ||
Coach | Andrej Lemanis | ||
Nickname(s) | Boomers | ||
Olympic Games | |||
Appearances | 14 | ||
FIBA World Cup | |||
Appearances | 11 | ||
FIBA Oceania Championship | |||
Appearances | 21 | ||
Medals |
Gold: (1971, 1975, 1978, 1979, 1981, 1983, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2011, 2013, 2015) Silver: (2001, 2009) |
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Uniforms | |||
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The Australian men's national basketball team is the men's basketball side that represents Australia in international competitions. The team is known in Australia as the Boomers, an Australian slang term for a male kangaroo. Australia is currently ranked 10th in the FIBA World Rankings, and finished 4th at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
Australia is a regional power in all forms of basketball. Placed in the relatively weak FIBA Oceania region, the Boomers' qualification for the Summer Olympic Games and FIBA World Cup is often a three-match competition against the other regional power, the New Zealand Tall Blacks.
Prior the formation of the National Basketball League in 1979, Boomers players were generally selected from the various state leagues around the country with Victoria, South Australia and to a lesser extent New South Wales being the dominant states. After the formation of the NBL, players began to be selected almost exclusively from that competition during the 1980s and 1990s. Occasionally players were selected from outside the NBL such as Mark Bradtke who made his Boomers debut in 1987 while attending the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) before he even entered the NBL, and Luc Longley who made his debut in 1988 while playing college basketball in the United States. This has changed in recent years, with many Australian players heading to the stronger Euroleague to play, and several heading to the National Basketball Association in North America. The Boomers roster for the 2014 World Cup featured five NBA players: Cameron Bairstow with the Chicago Bulls, Aron Baynes with the Detroit Pistons, Matthew Dellavedova with the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Dante Exum and Joe Ingles with the Utah Jazz. Two other players who were ruled out of the World Cup due to injury play in the NBA, namely Andrew Bogut of the Golden State Warriors and Patty Mills of the San Antonio Spurs. Further, several players on youth national teams are student athletes at the AIS or in the US college basketball system, and some players (e.g. Longley) have made the senior national team while still at US schools. By the early 21st century, close to half of the squad were playing outside of Australia. The trend of Boomers based outside of Australia has accelerated in the 2010s. For the 2012 London Olympic Games, only two members of the Australian squad were based in the country – Peter Crawford and Adam Gibson, with the latter being the only Australia-based member of the 2014 World Cup squad. The development of the Australian Institute of Sport has helped the establishment of Australia on the international stage.