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Cole would have raised the Boom!
TweetCAN’T help thinking it would have been a great investment for Basketball Australia to have flown Ken Cole into the Boomers camp ahead of the World Cup opener against Slovenia.
The controversial Hall of Famer is the greatest believer in our sport and our national teams you could hope to encounter.
But better, he is the master motivator of men.
With all due respect to the Xs and Os provided by head coach Andrej Lemanis, the extensive experience of Luc Longley, the insights of Trevor Gleeson and the wisdom of Adrian Hurley, no-one motivates men like Cole.
Yes he is ageing - who isn't? Yes he is ill.
But nothing burns the raging fires of passion in him like the green-and-gold.
Ahead of the World Cup opener, the Boomers were talking the talk, and rightly so.
But unlike Slovenia, which believed fully in itself, the Aussies played with enough traces of doubt to give their opponents the edge.
Cole erases doubt.
Some 38 years ago he fired up a South Australian team to beat the 10 Victorian Olympians heading to the Montreal Games.
He created history with his 1986 Adelaide 36ers' going a record 24-2 en route to the NBL Championship. He made those guys believe they were unbeatable and was out by two last-second buzzer-beaters.
Cole is an extraordinary man in an ordinary world, the most positive influence you ever could hope to meet.
Four years ago he looked at Chris Goulding and told him the sky was his limit.
After the Xs and Os were sorted and the game-plan in place, 10 minutes of Cole exhorting greatness from these Boomers as only he could - well ... those who know him and know basketball would have been in no doubt it would have been Australia 1-0, Slovenia 0-1.
The effort might have killed him but if he could choose a way to go, that would have been it.
Now we have this perilous situation where, in all honesty, it would be preferable to lose tonight to Lithuania.
The prize for winning would likely be a second-placed finish in Group D for the Aussies, behind Slovenia.
If they then got through the round-of-16 match against Group C's third-placed finisher, next in line would be the USA in the quarter-finals.
No-one wants that.
First or third in Group D avoids the USA until it is down to the last four teams. Clearly, it is the preferred option.
(In case you were wondering, a fourth-placed finish is suicide too as it means a round-of-16 match-up with Group C's top team - the USA.)
A loss to Lithuania would slot the Boomers into third, making the Slovenia-Lithuania result irrelevant because one of them would finish first, the other second.
A win over Lithuania would mean it would be to the Lithuanians' advantage to lose to Slovenia and finish third.
And of course, none of this factors in the unlikely but possible upset from a Mexico, Angola or Korea.
Throwing a game just isn't the Australian way and we can debate the merits or otherwise of that approach forever.
The "Anzac spirit" of having a crack against all odds and running head-long into a hail of bullets hasn't always proved the most beneficial route for Australia.
But it is who we are and we have every right to be proud of it.
In this instance, what it means is that game against Slovenia was - as Boomers swingman Brad Newley described it pre-tournament - "our gold medal game".
Makes me wish we'd had Cole's services for about 10 minutes of his uplifting oration - and I say that with no disrespect to the Boomers' coaching staff.
From here on, the journey to the medal dais is going to get rocky.
AUSTRALIA-Lithuania preview at News Corp:
