If this was Patty Mills’ final Olympic act, it belongs in the Louvre. It wasn’t enough

If this is to be the last impression we have of Patty Mills at the Olympic Games, it will live with anything by the impressionists hanging in the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay down the road.

Like their work, it will be as much about the feeling it summons to mind as the act.

Patty Mills shoots over Nikola Jokic to level the quarter-final at full-time.Credit: Getty Images

Mills had done as much as one mortal could to win this quarter-final against Serbia. In two minutes each side of quarter-time, he’d hit 16 points. Seemingly, every time he got the ball, wherever he got it, whoever was guarding him, however he shot it, he scored.

“To be honest, I don’t know if there’s anything going through my mind at that stage other than just being able to do what you rep and rep and rep, and the thousands of millions of shots that you practise just to have a three-minute stretch like that,” he said. “No one will ever be able to understand, really, but there’s a lot of practice.”

Next-gen’s Josh Giddey was almost as prolific, and with their impetus, the Boomers rumbled to a 24-point lead at one stage. As so often has been the case this century for the Australian basketball team, it was Mills and boom.

This was how the Australians plotted to beat the mountainous Serbs, by running rings around them. Coach Brian Goorjian said it was the best basketball the Boomers had played at the Olympics in his 16 years in charge.

Predictably, Australia’s hot hands eventually cooled. Predictably, the Serbs ground their way back into the contest, winning 95-90 in overtime. Goorjian expected no less; he ranks them as the second-best side in the world.

Their axis is hulking Nikola Jokic, winner of three of the last four NBA MVPs. At 211 centimetres, he’s the tallest of poppies and not easily cut down. Gradually, he asserted his presence. Mills, meantime, was guarded as if by German shepherds.

Serbia’s Nikola Jokic didn’t like what was happening against Australia, so took over the game.Credit: AP

The Serbs took the lead just before three-quarter-time and clung to it like a crucifix through the fourth quarter, neither growing it substantially nor losing it altogether. As the clock ran down and almost out, and Australia still trailed by two, they went again to Mills, who found himself confronting the bulky frame of Jokic on the perimeter.

Momentarily, the ball came loose from his control, but he recovered it in the same movement, jumped and shot at a ring he could barely have seen behind Jokic, falling backwards as he released and skidding on his back as he watched the ball in flight.

It went in. There were 1.4 seconds left on the clock. It was a Patty Mills moment in excelsis. For degree of difficulty, it matched Simone Biles in this very stadium last week, and was no less of a marvel of execution, too.

“You live for those moments as a little kid in the backyard, underneath the clothesline in Australia,” Mills said. “You imagine yourself as a little kid in those moments, being able to hit a big shot at the Olympic Games, force it in overtime. We gave ourselves a chance.”

A ‘heartbreaking’ end

It saved the moment, but not the day. In overtime, the Serbs were immovable, none less so than Jokic. With a blocked shot, a crucial rebound and an even more telling turnaround jumper all in the last minute, he took the match into his vast hands. He finished with 21 points, 14 rebounds and eight assists.

Australia’s last gasp was sadly poetic. Giddey’s inbound to Mills slipped out of his hand. They were Australia’s best two players on the night, the best of the last generation and the next in tandem, but helpless. Mills finished with 26 points, but only six after half-time. Giddey poured in 25.

Defeat hits Jock Landale hard in Paris.Credit: Getty Images

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Goorjian. “The first 16 minutes of that first half was as good basketball as we’ve played in my time at the Olympics. That’s the second-best team in the world.”

You could break it down in a dozen ways, for as Giddey said, a match like that comes down to one or two possessions. Goorjian rued turnovers, at the same time acknowledging they were to be budgeted for from a team that played at such breakneck speed. “Pace got us to where we wanted to be, but in the crunch time, we split the ball up too many times,” he said.

Australia will need time to process this tournament. After beating Spain, they lost to Canada, Greece and Serbia. Goorjian noted that each had an NBA superstar at its heart, namely Canada’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Greece’s Giannis Antetokounmpo and then Jokic. It’s rare quality at the Olympics.

Josh Giddey takes on Nikola Jokic in the Australia-Serbia quarter-final.Credit: Getty Images

“When you come to push and shove, how do we lose?” asked Goorjian.

“Shai got it done [for Canada and] when you come to Greece, then Giannis, and when you come to this, who makes the plays down the stretch, the tipping the ball off the rim, stripping it underneath the basket, the step back? Nikola. They make plays, and that’s why they’re superstars.”

What’s next for the Boomers?

Australia are a team in transition, from the Mills era to Giddey and friends. Some of their basketball was sparkling, but not sustained. This was easy to anticipate in a team with their profile, but less easy to digest.

Goorjian has seen enough to excite him about the future, though it won’t be under his tutelage. Jock Landale, Dante Exum and Jack McVeigh represent a future core, and the blooding has begun behind them, 21-year-olds Giddey and Dyson Daniels both excelling. “I just think we’ll be throwing punches at the Olympics for a long time,” he said.

Mills, too, is encouraged.

“Giddey’s an unbelievable talent,” he said. “The Boomers are in great hands.”

Giddey himself was feeling the heartache that often becomes a goad.

“It’s a tough pill to swallow, knowing we have to wait four years for the next one,” he said.

The unknown is the size of the hole Mills leaves. At 35, he played more minutes in Paris than any other player and scored more points than all except Giddey. Goorjian did not shy away from saying that Australia did not have another player with as many facets to his game as Mills.

But it’s hardly news that Mills has meant more to the Boomers than the sum of his court endeavours. He’s their leader, their talisman and their embodiment, and the impact he’s had on his country is deeper by far than his basketball endeavours. He’s become a significant figure in the annals of Australian sport.

If this deathless buzzer-beater is to be the last we see of Mills, at least it’s indelible. It’s the scale of the void behind it that’s hard to see.

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