page_title: Australia men's national basketball team
section_title: 2010s: Additional NBA players
hierarchical_section_title: Australia men's national basketball team / History / 2010s: Additional NBA players
context_page_description: The Australian men's national basketball team, known as the Boomers after the slang for a male kangaroo, represents Australia in international basketball competition.
  Australia is a regional power in basketball. Placed in the relatively weak FIBA Oceania region, the Boomers's 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.
  Before the formation of the National Basketball League in 1979, Boomers players were selected from state leagues around the country, with Victoria, South Australia, and to a lesser extent New South Wales 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. Mark Bradtke made his Boomers debut in 1987 while attending the Australian Institute of Sport before he entered the NBL. Luc Longley made his debut in 1988 while playing college basketball in the United States. Other Australian players enter the Euroleague and the National Basketball Association in the U.S.
context_section_description: The Boomers qualified for the 2010 FIBA World Championship in Turkey and placed 10th overall. In 2011, Melbourne-born number one NBA draft pick Kyrie Irving considered declaring his international allegiance to Australia in order to compete in the 2012 Olympics, but eventually opted to wait for international selection for the United States.
  Despite Irving declining the offer to represent his country of birth, the Boomers entered the 2012 London Olympic Games with arguably their most talented roster since 2000, though they were missing their star centre Andrew Bogut, who was out with a broken ankle. Australia made the quarter finals with a 3–2 win-loss record, but gold medallists United States put the Boomers away late in the game, ending their run with a seventh-place finish again.
  Following the London Olympics, Brett Brown announced his decision to step down as Boomers head coach, citing his desire to spend more time with his family in the United States. As of December 2012, Basketball Australia was yet to announce his replacement, although one of his assistants, dual National Basketball League championship winning coach with the New Zealand Breakers, Andrej Lemanis, was one of the favourites to win the job.
  On 24 April 2013, Lemanis was announced as the new head coach of the Boomers.
  By winning the 2013 FIBA Oceania Championship, Australia qualified for the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup in Spain. Australia was drawn into Group D, alongside Lithuania, Slovenia, Angola, Mexico, and South Korea. After suffering an opening round 90-80 loss to Slovenia, Australia bounced back, stringing together three consecutive wins over South Korea, Lithuania and Mexico, the first time in 16 years that Australia had won 3 consecutive matches at the FIBA World Cup. However, in their next match Australia suffered a 91–83 loss to Angola, which came despite leading by 15 points in the middle of the third quarter. This result, combined with Lithuania's 67-64 win over Slovenia, meant that Australia finished third in their group, qualifying for the knockout stage of the tournament.
  Because Australia would finish third by losing, and that finishing third would benefit Australia more than finishing second, combined with the absences of fit key players Aron Baynes and Joe Ingles led to allegations that Australia deliberately lost their game against Angola in order to finish third in their group, and as a result, avoid the United States until the semi-finals, with Slovenian basketballer Goran Dragić posting "Basketball is a beautiful sport, there is no room for fixing the game like today Australia vs Angola!! @FIBA should do something about that!" on Twitter. However, these claims were denied by Boomers coach Andrej Lemanis. On 26 November 2014, Australia was cleared of tanking by FIBA.
  Australia met World No. 7 Turkey in the knockout stage of the tournament. Australia suffered a 65-64 loss to Turkey, ending their World Cup campaign, meaning that for the 11th World Cup, Australia would return home empty handed.
  Leading into the 2016 Rio Olympics, Australia saw a surge in locals being drafted into the NBA. Along with former number 1 NBA draft pick Andrew Bogut, Dante Exum was taken with the fifth pick in the 2014 NBA draft and Ben Simmons was selected with the first pick in the 2016 NBA draft, adding to already established Australian NBA players in Patty Mills, Matthew Dellavedova, Joe Ingles and Aron Baynes. Forward Thon Maker was also drafted with the 10th pick in the 2016 NBA draft. Despite Exum, Maker and Simmons electing not to compete in the 2016 Olympics, the Australians equaled their best ever performance by reaching the semifinals and losing their bronze medal playoff with Spain by one point.
caption: Team Australia at the 2014 FIBA World Cup before beating Lithuania 82-75.
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