They did lose to Mexico but you missed one minor detail, they use a G League squad for qualifying rounds.

Adelaide are better off without Shorter, he is a spud.

Oops wrong thread ^

Is there anywhere poor people can watch the game

Foxtel. First month is free

Someone is getting obsessed with me. This is my first time to write a comment today. Hahaha. SMH. LOL.

I'm pretty sure for WC's and Olympics the previous gold medalist and the host nation get automatic entry in to the next tournament so if still the case the US as the winners of the last WC are already in regardless which would explain using a G-League team of guys like David Stockton etc.

Go on. Just so you know I'm straight. Sorry to disappoint you mate. Not my thing. Hahaha.

18-13 Japan leading.

Hachimura is the goods.

Kay... his touch around the hoop is one of the big things that scares me with him, and makes me think he's probably not worth what Perth paid for him.

Don't try to hide it. I know your kinds. Haha. Sorry into woman mate. Better luck next time. Anyway Japan trash team leading 30-22 haha.

Once upon a time I thought Nick Fazekas was going to be a poor man's Dirk Nowitzki.

Wow, Kickert just jumped for a rebound.

Hachimura is Japanese - father is African, speaks fluent Japanese.

Any free streams?

Can't wait for the excuses later on the L. Hahaha...

OK Carl.

#ThisIsMyHouse

Naturalization rules only apply for people who change nationality after the age of 16 (...cue Thon Maker age jokes...)

Win, Lose or draw... We have to be real with some of these selections. Kickert? What is the value of having a 35-year-old out there? Fazekas is a big v caliber big man, and DK is making him look like an NBA All-Star.

Let's think about our development as a national team and get some international games into our younger prospects. Kay/Brandt take one, play the same role do the same thing.

Thoughts..?

Fazekas was a Mavs early 2nd round pick like a decade ago. Stretch 4/5 who put up good college numbers at Nevada, but never amounted to anything in the NBA. Can't remember why I was hyped about him that draft, but I expected him to be a big steal and I remember watching the summer league games and he looked fairly terrible and I never heard of him again until tonight.

If not for degenerative foot issues Fazekas would have had a 10 year NBA career under his belt. Just look at him run the floor - it's almost painful to watch.

Brick Kay

Nick Kay and the Bad Threes

Cadee on, here comes the Japan run.

Pure gold Angus!

Haven't seen a box score, but feels like Kay is about 0-8? Has he made anything outside of a FT?

54-52 trash japan still leading. Just what I said on the other tread it will be a close game than the 1st one. Then you went crazy and go ballistic on me. Hahaha.

Kickert put more effort into that flop than he's put into every defensive possession of his career combined up until this point.

Maybe you need to re visit the thread. All I said w/out our nba players we will be having a hard time againts the complete squad of a chinese team or the fancy phil squad. Take note compete squad not the half bath squad. You are the one who got a short term memory. Hahaha.

Has Lemanis ever watched Thon in the NBA? Not sure hitting him in the low post is playing to his strengths.

Nice guess. But you are wrong. Don't worry the chinese team rotates their squad to 3 different sets. Can't wait for the full line up chinse team againts your so called cannot be beaten team. Hahaha. Keep dreaming.

With thon maker and deli. Haha. Well you are lucky there's a lot of politics in the Lebanese leagues Chinese leagues and Philippines leagues. They can't send a full line up just like youe c team. Hahaha.

NICK KAY WITH THE UNCONTESTED SHOT FROM DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF THE BASKET

NICK KAY WITH THE wide open miss from the baseline that leads to a Japan basket.

Classic Nick Kay.

what was that?

Game ball goes to Nick Kay, no question.

Basketball is the winner in this one!

Japan looked much better organised.

Well done, Japan.

Sme dudes be eating crow - indeed...

Can Fazekas play as a local in the NBL now he's Japanese? He's Tom Jarvis with an outside shot and better passing.

I think Lemanis does OK when we've got all our guys available, but his selection choices with the NBL guys leaves a lot to be desired.

This puts life into the Asian region. Shuts up arrogant and ignorant Australians who think every game is a walkover and gives the other Asians teams belief. It's all good.

Def agree with AussiePride about that - a stronger Asia region is good for us long term, and a guy like Hachimura means Japan might end up being a team to push us over the next decade.

Aus were $1.01 with the bookies before tipoff.

Now in live betting $1.50, finally value. Feast on it boys.

It's ok anonymous take that L. Don't be salty and keep flagging my post. Hahaha. Cry baby.

Carl, random anons can't flag posts.

Grow up.

Kay takes last two big shots? WTF
Even leading up to that I couldn't believe how much court time he was getting??
Rotations were bad...
Game plan was poor...
Lemanis was seriously out coached...

Puzzled as to why Kay was the go to man down the stretch.

What a pathetic, woeful display. And I don't want to hear about a "15 win streak" again. We should be having win streaks against Asia. Newsflash - THEY'RE NOT THAT GOOD!

Either way, we deserved to lose tonight. You've got Nick Kay out there aiming for something that isn't the ring. You've got Daniel Kickert seeing how many times he can pump fake and pivot before taking an open shot, and falling over any time someone posts him. And you've got a coach that inexplicably put Goulding on the bench right when he was making things happen.

I know it only one loss. I know we've dominated Asia. But games like this make me fear for what we're going to do when we finally level up and go to the world cup. You cannot have one of these games at the world cup or you're fucked.

And yeah, the personnel will be different, but the coaching will be the same. You see Lemanis there, laughing without a care in the world, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he's about to lead to one of the more embarrassing losses we've faced in years. Is he REALLY the guy whose going to bring us home our first medal or is he going to squander our golden generation?

And I also don't want to hear that we haven't had much time to gel either. Basically the same team has played together, on and off, consistently since before the Asia Cup last year. Yeah, Delly and Thon are kind of new additions, but they should have bolstered the team, not brought them down. They played like they all only met and heard of eachother once the ball was tipped. Actually I've seen scratch matches played by teams of fill ins with more chemistry than that.

I don't want to see Lemanis smirk smugly and rattle off a bunch of self congratulatory garbage about how it's all part of the process and litter us with excuses. The guy needs to admit that what happened tonight was simply not good enough.

A couple of things.

1. Since the inception of the B League here in Japan the performance of the national team has improved out of sight. Prior to the B League men's pro basketball was joke, something that trickled down to the national team. Players have always been skilled - they just lacked toughness, cohesiveness, and size. The new league is far higher quality - and it's showing in tonight's result.

2. Japan had to put in a good performance here win or lose, as they have a must win game against Taiwan on Monday. Having dropped the home leg against them - with a sell out game in Taipei and 2 new key players they had everything to play for.

Yeah, I know if the Boomers had their A team they would have won comfortably, but they didn't and were beaten by a well deserving team.

Finally some peope talking sense. Hahaha. Sorry I was in a business call. Anyway hopefully japan continue to improve and aus bring a complete line up into their next games/window. But yeah NBA sucks. Haha.

Hachimura - Like the look of him, think he'll turn into a very solid NBA vet in the mold of Paul Pierce and similar types

Fezekas - Solid no-nonsense and good decision maker. Has found a nice home for his age and talent

Dellavedova - IMO is on his final NBA contract. Works hard but not a good enough shooter or athletic enough to stay in the NBA

Kay - hope he doesn't find his way onto the 'A squad'

Maker - Glad to see him in Green and Gold

Let's not forget that there were some big rotation changes since we last played. Creek was out, and Delly and Maker in

Thanks for the link

Creek is a loss, sure. I mean there are definitely minutes Creek would have played that would have been minutes Nick Kay was on the bench.

I agree, Delly will be out the NBA soon.

Apparently Australia is now guaranteed to avoid the USA in the final round.

Hahaha. Yes, yes it smacks of what we did with Angola.


..... and then what we did with Turkey.

"This puts life into the Asian region. Shuts up arrogant and ignorant Australians"

"Def agree with AussiePride about that - a stronger Asia region is good for us"

So Australia being shit is good for Australia??

It's neither Arrogant nor Ignorant to say that we should have won that.

It's a problem with this whole stupid system.
We have to play through this ridiculous fiasco, and because everybody knows its a joke, we're expected to do it with our 2nd~3rd string team. So its a difficult balancing act. Exactly how crap is crap enough?
How badly do we need to stink to make it interesting?

You can't put out a team featuring the likes of Sobey, Cadee, Kickert, Drmic, etc, and expect anybody to take it seriously.

Well done to Japan. They saw an opportunity (just as if we encountered an unprepared 4th-string USA team) and they went for it.

Personally, I think Australia should take the games a lot more seriously. Put together better teams, and smash the fuck out of it. Only way the system will be changed is if we reduce it to a laughing stock. Crap results like this only mean that the pin-heads will applaud it as a success.

Forget the "sack Lemanis" crap. It's not going to happen with not many games left before the World Cup. Lemanis deserves to continue based on Rio.

Having said that, tonight he has to take a large chunk of the blame for this. The team looked disorganised. The response to the zone defense was poor. It seemed like the team didn't have much of a game plan against Hachimura and Fezekas. Hopefully this will wake up the team in preparation for the Philippines.

I thought the Boomers looked better when they pushed up the tempo. It didn't happen enough tonight. There were too many threes without exploring other options.

I thought our interior defence was really poor, fezekas and hachimua seemed to be able to get what ever they wanted inside and got numerous o boards. Where was Brandt I thought he would have been our best bet to counter fezekas and don't even remember seeing him on court. Thon was often out muscled or out of position playing catch-up d and kickert offers next to nothing defensively.

Well played by Japan they executed better and just looked more desperate

@ AD; nope, we definitely should have won that game. It was a massive choke job. Just saying that the odd loss here and there won't do us any harm.

The new qualifying system is great. It's good for basketball in the region as a whole. I can tell you there has been a huge buzz in the Japanese basketball community, and a game like this will reverberate in the general community. I'm sure it's the same wherever Aus and Nz go.

The reality is that outside of Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea (China is still shite in spite of popularity and money) the level of basketball being played by nat teams is still low.

Just like Oceania's entry into Asia helped raise the level of play of football in the region, the same applies to this new basketball format.

Direct qualification from Oceania was a joke. If it were like football in the old days - where we played home away against highly competent teams like Iran and Uruguay for direct entry into the tournament - fair enough.

Besides, the Boomers still need to blood a bench for the WCs (and find emerging talent in general) and these games serve a purpose for that alone.

For example: Shinoyama, Japan's game-breaking PG went from a 3rd stringer to our starter based on last night. The same can happen for any player on any team.

Its done - focus on Monday now.

Hachimura has only been with the senior team around 3 weeks or so. So, it's to be expected his plus minus might not be great. Just watching the game he took a lot of questionable hero-ball shots. That said he has the talent and tools to pull off hero-ball.

Warning:the following is a rambling observation of last night's game and makes no reference to trash or a person's sexual preference (conscious or unconscious). Thus this post may be in the wrong thread. Sorry.

The Boomers have qualified for the second round so last night's game, and the next against the Philippines, are meaningless in respect to Australia qualifying for the World Cup.

If anything these games are a trial to see who has the goods to make the cut when more overseas based players come back to the program in the coming months.

Japan on the other hand needed to win to keep its hopes alive and playing in front of a supportive home crowd, it had everything to lose. Furthermore, its failure to win a game back in February had a major impact on a very proud national program. The Japanese were primed for last night, the Aussies.... well the result says it all really.

As noted in an early post, a great deal of effort has also gone into improving the domestic game in Japan so last night's result will have them buzzing. Their next game against Chinese Taipei will be intense.

As for the Boomers, it was nice to finally see "BoomerThon", he will develop a better understanding of how the international game is so different to the NBA. Delly getting some game time was good too.

Goulding reinforced his spot on the team while I thought the others hurt there chances. I wonder if Andrej assigned Mr 400K to be the go to on offense to see if he could step up. He gave it his best but fell well short of my expectations. Hopefully he gets better for the experience and can go to the next level.

At absolute best this will be a wake up call for the Boomers. I feel like we play a little bit entitled when we come into a game we expect to win. There's a "she'll be right, mate" attitude that we really don't want to be fostering here. We're going to walk into a lot of games at the World Cup and Olympics that we will expect to win, and if we come in playing with the mentality we did last night, and the mentality we have in other Asia games (that we have won despite not really seeming to care), we will get beaten. We will probably have the second most talented team in 2019 and 20, but we cannot go in thinking like that or we're going to lose to some obscure second-rate basketball nation that barely even scraped in.

The game wasn't meaningless either. If we lose to Philippines, we qualify second in the pool. Think about that - SECOND IN THE POOL. That is embarrassing for a team that should be the Dream Team of Asia. And qualifying second will result in our crossovers, and could potentially affect our draw at the World Cup. It could be the difference between catching Team USA in the first crossover or not, quite literally. But Andrej Lemanis will joke and laugh and sip his tea like Kermit and act like this loss means absolutely nothing, but he'd better have a bit more of a straight face on Monday.

As for the Boomers, it was nice to finally see "BoomerThon", he will develop a better understanding of how the international game is so different to the NBA. Delly getting some game time was good too.

... and that's without mentioning our underwhelming defence.

but he'd better have a bit more of a straight face on Monday.

Apparently 1st round pool W/L carries over to 2nd round, so all losses no matter the excuse can have potentially serious consequences.

Unfortunately Japan is already up against it should they make the 2nd round.Choked against the Philippines in an eminently winnable game and again against Taiwan in a game that the vrtually had in the bag. Bummer... but it is what it is.

http://www.fiba.basketball/basketballworldcup/2019/asian-qualifiers/howtoqualify