Basketball On The Internet.

WHAT a game! What a win! And no, I’m not talking about San Antonio blowing Oklahoma City off the floor in today’s Game 5 of the NBA’s Western Conference playoffs.

Trailing by 15 at the worst and by double digits for about three-quarters of Game 1 in the Sino-Australia Challenge last night at Perth’s Challenge Stadium, Andrej Lemanis’ Boomers dug deep to come back from 11 down inside the last 3-4 minutes to beat China.

Brock Motum sealed an 81-81 tie in regulation, first with the tying basket, then by blocking China’s last lay-up attempt at the win.

He was impressive.

In overtime, Rhys Martin stole the ball on China’s opening offence and Australia was ahead for the first time, en route to a stunning 97-95 overtime win.

Stunning is the best way to describe it too because the Chinese team controlled 75 per cent of the contest, Lemanis’ rookies initially struggling on the big stage.

It took Luke Nevill to provide Australia some early offence and for Mark Worthington to show the way forward by refusing to take a step back.

Wortho did his World Cup selection chances no harm but Motum and Lucas Walker (11 points in the fourth quarter fightback) also served notice they should be on the radar.

As it rightly was pointed out yesterday on social media, this game marked one of those rare occasions where the visiting team had more love from the officials than the home side in Perth, with the Boomers racking up 32 points to 31.

It was a (phantom) foul extravaganza with four Chinese players eventually sin-binned, along with Boomers pair Hugh Greenwood and Worthington.

Walker led the Aussies with 17 points and seven boards, Motum and Ben Madgen with 15 points apiece and Nevill with 16 and six rebounds.

China was paced by Liu Ziao-yu and Zhou Peng’s 19 points each.

Australia connected on just one three pointer from 14 attempts but went from turnstile defence to an aggressive all-floor press which saw China crack.

(It turned out to be way more fun to watch than the Geelong-Sydney AFL game, unless you’re a Swannies fan.)

Motum had his share of moments and was the pick of the debutants.

SHAME Basketball Australia’s pre-publicity was so piece-poor that even the 3,500-capacity Challenge Stadium barely looked as if 1,000 fans had been hustled in to sit opposite the TV cameras.

The place looked bare, sadly.

Considering the Perth Wildcats lost Game 2 of an NBL Grand Final on the Friday night but sold out Perth Arena (13,000-plus) within hours for a deciding Game 3 on the Sunday morning, it shows how far behind and bewildered BA remains in terms of marketing its elite product.

Shame too because the comeback was worth seeing, as was getting a look at a host of new faces wearing the green-and-gold.

But then, it is BA, after all.

Pretty sure looking at BA’s tweets that the federation has forgotten it has a Boomers-specific Twitter account @AussieBoomers where today the only mention of the win is with an NBL retweet.

Keep paying attention SEABL.

And WNBL.

GREAT to see Luc Longley, Adrian Hurley and Brad Davidson supporting Lemanis on the Boomers’ bench.

Also good to see Nate Jawai with the team again.

CONGRATULATIONS to ABC-TV’s color commentator Tony “Hard to Bear” Ronaldson for increasing his off-season vocabulary with the word “insurmountable”.

Now all “Hard To” needs to do before tomorrow’s Game 2 in Perth is look up “incoherent” – which should be about two pages left of insurmountable.

PATTY Mills, leading scorer at the 2012 Olympic Games, swished three 3-pointers today as the Spurs took a 3-2 lead over Oklahoma with a whopping 117-89 victory in Game 5 of their NBA Western Conference Final.

Tim Duncan led the way with 22 points and 12 boards and had great support from Manu Ginobili (19 points at 51 per cent), and a host of Spurs, including Boris Diaw.

Starting Matt Bonner in place of Tiago Splitter changed things up for San Antonio after its double-digit road loss in Game 4, although OKC guard Russell Westbrook came up with a monster dunk that had to be seen to be believed.

But Westbrook and Kevin Durant definitely need more teammates to step up.

STEVE Ballmer has made a $2billion offer for the Los Angeles Clippers.

Donald Sterling should be thrilled. To be a confirmed bigot and racist and have a $2b offer for a club he purchased for $12million just seems like it's a story right out of DC Comics' Bizarro World.