Basketball On The Internet.

THEY'VE been our best Boomers team of all time - our "Dreamtime Team".

Agreed, that claim cannot actually be formalised until they beat Serbia tomorrow morning, or score (at worst) a bronze medal, because we've had three Olympic teams get this far before.

But no Australian Olympic men's team has won back-to-back matches to start a Games campaign before this one, and it was back in Atlanta 20 years ago the Boomers last even opened the tournament with a win.

Entering these Olympics ranked 11th by FIBA, they thrashed France (ranked 5th but a bronze medallist at the 2014 FIBA World Cup), iced Serbia (ranked 6th but the World Cup silver medallist), gave the USA its first startle of the Games, before nailing China (14th) and Venezuela (22nd) ahead of thumping Lithuania (3rd) in what, until tomorrow, was Australia's most significant match since the Sydney 2000 Games.

Never before have the Boomers entered an Olympics Final Four with a 5-1 win-loss record.

Never before have they been rated second offensively at a Games, or second defensively as well.

They relish sharing the ball, they play for each other - at both ends of the floor - and they are as locked in on the task at hand as any team this nation has produced.

Where others have spouted dreams, hopes and aspirations for a medal, this Boomers team BELIEVES it.

Those 82-game NBA regular seasons have given us a peerless, fearless singleminded leadership unit which has routed opponents by an average of 22.4ppg.

Certainly, it's still uphill from here and unchartered waters because past Boomers have failed at this point, losing their semi, losing the bronze medal game.

As a former Boomers coach once said, if you reach a Final Four and come fourth, you failed.

The pleasure they already have brought, the chaos across international basketball they already have wrought and the shot-in-the-arm they already have given our sport means they only can be viewed as our greatest of all time.

Of course, this team would have none of that.

"We haven't achieved anything yet," Andrew Bogut (above celebrating Aron Baynes' slam dunk) would tell us.

"We're going for gold," Patty Mills (below, showing his delight) would remind us.

Matthew Dellavedova won an NBA ring this year. Bogut won one last year. Mills and Baynes won the year before. They understand about a campaign, rather than about temporary victories.

These Boomers went to Uluru for a reason. They aren't dreaming.

And this is a dream campaign none of us want to wake up from until the end of that medal ceremony.

 

YOU just can't trust us in the media, it appears.

Grant Miocevich of our fantastic supporters in Rio (Go to the "Basketball On The Internet" Facebook page for the link to my News Corp story about our hardy crew at the Games) has reason to dispute much of what has been written and said.

"In the lead up to Rio, the media engendered wholesale fear about Zika, security and the
dangers that would beset any would be Australians venturing to South America," he wrote me.

"What has been the reality on the ground?

"I have only seen one mosquito in a café near General Osorio Station and I killed it. End of story.

"Security? I have walked back to my hotel through the streets of Rio as late as 3am in the morning while most in Rio were sleeping. No issue.

"Moreover, we have found the cariocas of Rio the most welcoming and inviting of people in spite of the backdrop of political corruption that has plagued Brazil over the years. All I can say in my limited Portuguese is that Rio is Lindo Maravilhoso! Or in the Australian vernacular, bloody marvellous!”

LEGION & THE PREZ: Grant Miocevich & the Legion meet FIBA President Horacio Muratore

If you can't believe the second-best friend of FIBA president Horacio Muratore, who can you believe?

 

BEEN amused myself by some of the media coverage.

Various reports have had the Opals winning two silvers and three gold medals in the past five Olympics, the Boomers winning bronze in Atlanta, David Andersen perpetually David Anderson, and Danny Morseu again feted as our first indigenous Olympic basketballer (in 1980, 1984).

Um, no. That would STILL be the late, great Basketball Australia Hall of Famer Michael Ahmatt in 1964. (Why BA doesn't ever pick that up always astonishes me.)

It's a reflection of how well the Boomers are travelling that everyone and their neighbour in the media now is an instant basketball analyst.

 

MY only fear ahead of the men's semi finals is a sort of 'history repeat" from 1988 when the Boomers first reached an Olympic semi final series.

The eventual gold medallist Soviet Union beat USA in one semi while Australia went down to Yugoslavia and had to face the Americans for bronze.

That's the only scenario I must admit I dread - that Spain, which has been improving with every game, upsets the USA in their semi and Serbia finds the key to unlocking the Boomers, sending them crashing headlong into a bronze medal rematch with the seething Americans.

Fortunately, it's one of the least likely scenarios of all the options out there.

 

STILL enjoying the Channel 7 commentary of Andrew Gaze and John Casey.

Andrew has always had the knowledge but we've only ever heard the passion. Now he's sharing insights and has jumped right off that fence he perennially occupied and is undoubtedly doing his best work behind a microphone.

Casey, in my view, has only ever had one superior caller - the late and greatly missed and lamented Clinton Grybas. But Case can become tiresome with his insistence on inserting catch-phrases we've come to know and either love-or-loathe.

In Rio, he has cut down on that noticeably and is back doing what he does best, calling the games with knowledge and perception, his professionalism and research right to the fore.

That's the caller I grew up enjoying.

(Someone just needs to tell him when a shot swishes straight through, it hasn't "tumbled" in.

There were so many "tumbles" in his last call, I swear I thought Seven had crossed to the gymnastics.)

 

PS

For those who have been asking, my final Opals and Boomers analyses won't appear until after the flame at the Games has flickered for the final time. Thanks for your texts, messages and emails.