Boomers seal last-second win over French team starring NBA’s tallest player
By Tom Decent
Orléans: Boomers skipper Patty Mills has brushed off questions about his place in the starting team and declared that Australia can better the bronze medal they won in Tokyo after a thrilling final second win in a warm-up match over a French side featuring the NBA’s tallest player Victor Wembanyama.
But it could come at a cost for the Boomers, with Dante Exum in danger of missing the tournament opener against Spain on Saturday after suffering a nasty finger injury.
In their last warm-up match before the Olympics, Australia recorded an 83-82 win over France in Orléans, about a 90-minute drive south of Paris, in a match where Mills made a game-high 24 points and Dyson Daniels landed a lay-up with a second on the clock.
Before the match, former Boomers star Andrew Bogut suggested that Patty Mills should be dropped from the Boomers’ starting five after a patchy performance in a 98-92 loss to the USA earlier this month.
Mills said he hadn’t seen Bogut’s remarks.
“News to me mate,” Mills told reporters. “I’m head down and the task at hand now, being able to get this team on the right path to achieve something very special.
Patty Mills top-scored for Australia.Credit: Getty Images
“The most important thing for this group is our ability to be in the trenches together and feel that strength of the locker room.”
Australia’s breakthrough bronze medal in Tokyo was a monumental achievement for the men’s team but the group wants more, and they performed strongly following a come-from-behind win over a French side ranked No.9 in the world.
“We’re better [than Tokyo],” Mills said. “We did something special in Tokyo, but we acknowledge that we don’t want to be that team any more. We want to be better. The grit of this team, the toughness, I believe we’re better, and we’re able to accomplish something more than we did in Tokyo.”
France’s basketball player Victor Wembanyama, Credit: AP
Boomers coach Brian Goorjian said Exum had gone for scans after coming off with a finger injury.
Asked if he might miss Australia’s opening match in less than a weeks’ time, Goorjian said: “Concerned. Definitely a dislocation. We don’t know the extent of it. He’s getting scans now. It’s a concern.”
Goorjian was quick to rubbish suggestions that Mills, a soon-to-be a veteran of five Olympics, was not a critical member of the team.
“You guys watched. There has been no question in my mind about the selection,” Goorjian said. “He’s in great shape and moving well. Total belief. He’s going to be a key factor.”
Despite the result, the highlight of the night was France’s Wembanyama, who will be one of the superstars of these Olympics.
Raised in Le Chesnay in western Paris, Wembanyama is regarded as the most promising player to enter the NBA in two decades after becoming the first French player to come in at No.1 in the 2023 draft.
The 20-year-old San Antonio Spurs superstar is a player who LeBron James has described as a “generational talent”.
If Wembanyama stands on his toes, he can touch a basketball rim at 3.05 metres tall.
Wembanyama, who is 224 centimetres tall and boasts a wingspan of 244 centimetres, opened his account with a slam dunk inside 30 seconds that could not have looked more effortless.
Boomers young gun Will Magnay had the unenviable task of marking Wembanyama. At one stage, he unintentionally bumped Wembanyama to the ground, much to the disgust of thousands of flag-waving fans who are in love with the NBA’s latest rookie of the year.
Wembanyama, who boasts four million Instagram followers, scored 17 points to go with 12 rebounds and eight assists.
Mills scored 11 of the Boomers’ first 19 points, while Josh Giddey controlled the game beautifully with 20 points.
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