27 October 2021
The Australian men’s basketball team has long been considered an underdog at international level, always earning the respect of other teams but falling short on many occasions. (Kennedy 2021)
This journey aims to highlight:
key moments in Australia’s basketball history, focussing on men’s basketball,
how Australians engage with the sport of Basketball, and
different measures of basketball success, including Olympic achievements.
The following timeline illustrates a few key historical basketball events since the sport’s invention in 1891 and highlights some pivotal moments for Australian men’s basketball.
Close to a million Australians play basketball making it the second highest team sport in terms of participation. The other major team sports Australians engage with are football/soccer, netball and Australian football. Basketball has seen the largest participation uptick in recent years.
Basketball continues to be a male dominated sport with the ratio of male and female players not changing significantly in the last five years in comparison to other team sports.
Established in 1978 with ten teams the NBL was the first sport in Australia to run a national competition, the NBL also includes a New Zealand based team making it a truly regional (Oceania) league. (NBL 2021)
The US National Basketball Association (NBA) is a multi-billion dollar league and is considered the preeminent basketball league in the world. Most other highly ranked international leagues are based in Europe. While salaries are not as lucrative in the US or Europe, the Australian National Basketball League (NBL) is considered one of the top 12 leagues in the world. (EuroProBasket 2021)(Fraschilla 2017).
The Australian men’s basketball team first competed in basketball at the 1952 Melbourne Olympic Games and the ‘Boomers’ have qualified for every Games since Munich, 1972 with mixed success.
The undisputed men’s basketball Olympic champions are the United States. They won the very first gold medal in Berlin, 1932 and have won 16 out of the 20 gold medals on offer at successive Olympic games.
After decades of coming agonisingly close and playing for the bronze medal on five occasions, winning the bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games cemented the Australian men’s basketball team as one of the top Olympic teams.
For anyone that’s been to Japan and scaled Mt Fuji the reward
is a breathtakingly beautiful golden sunrise.
Similarly the Australian men’s basketball team were rewarded
following their long Olympic quest.
For the generations of Australian basketball players and coaches this bronze medal meant so much more than just for the players on the court who earned it. (Holmes 2021)
This collective effort was not lost on Patty Mills, current team captain, who honoured…
“…the past and the present and the future that’s coming in. And they’ll know – we’re only here because of all of them.” (Kennedy 2021, para.2)