Basketball On The Internet.

THE Melbourne Cup rightly is revered as the race that stops a nation but yesterday the Boomers brought Australia to a halt, even if they couldn't stop the USA.

The match coverage on Channel 7 peaked with 1.4m TV viewers, and 739k live streams, beating the Melbourne Cup Race record!

Now THAT's notoriety.

Basketball Australia and the National Basketball League have to capitalise on this kind of free publicity, especially the NBL which has Rio Olympians David Andersen (Melbourne United), Cam Bairstow (Brisbane Bullets), Chris Goulding (Melbourne United), Kevin Lisch (Sydney Kings) and Damian Martin (Perth Wildcats) all returning to our league.

Yesterday in an online report for News Corp, four-time Olympian Phil Smyth said: “The world recognition for the quality of Australian basketball has gone through the roof.

“Everyone in the world now knows we can play basketball to this level.

“It’s a huge shot in the arm for Australian basketball and for our own NBL.”

Smyth, a member of the first Australia team to reach an Olympic medal playoff – Seoul’s 1988 battle for bronze lost to the last USA team suiting only college elite – said he had become a believer in the Boomers’ gold chances after watching the match.

BOOMER BIFF: A ref separates Ray Borner from the US's David Robinson after a scuffle in the Seoul bronze medal playoff.  

“We clearly believe we can take them in a gold medal game, if we get there,” he said.

“The thing you have to like about this team is not only is it talented, have great and obvious chemistry and genuine belief it can win gold, but it has a number of smart players who aren’t going to do something silly.

“Matthew Dellavedova is a smart player, Andrew Bogut is a smart player. One-through-five they’re smart players, then there’s David Andersen coming in who’s a smart player.

“That shouldn’t be under-estimated and it’s a great asset for (coach) Andrej Lemanis. There’s no-one with an agenda and as long as they don’t get lazy at any point, gold is a genuine possibility.

“Or at least a medal.”

Australia has played for bronze twice since Seoul, losing to Lithuania in Atlanta in 1996 and at Sydney 2000.

The Boomers already have set themselves apart from past Australian Olympic teams by not only winning their opening match of the tournament for the first time since 1996, but then by backing it up with a second win for the first time in Australia's Games' history.

But there still is a long way to go to get to the podium. The good news? So far, so good.

And all of Australia knows it.