Marching towards the medal: Australian boomers at the Rio Olympics

The Australian Boomers at the Rio Olympics do not save their best for last: second victory in a row against the favorite Serbia.

They surprised France two days ago and now they did the same with Serbia too. The Australian boomers seems to be on fire on these Olympics. A spectacular 95-80 win over Serbia, second on the last World Championship in Spain, can not be just taken for granted. The first games of the Boomers in Rio pose one question: can the Aussies finally conquer an Olympic medal?

NBA boomers shining against Serbia

Leaded by the sensational Matthew Dellavedova, ex shooting guard of the current NBA champions Cleveland Cavaliers, who transferred from the next season to the Milwaukee Bucks team, the Boomers had control over the whole match. As sites dealing with internet betting in Serbia state, the win might not have been that big if it wasn’t for the last two minutes in which the Serbian defense practically left the Australians crash them completely.

• The Serbian defense lacked usual stability

• Dellavedova marks a magnificent personal start of the Olympics

• Patty Mills

Dellavedova had a magnificent game for the Boomers with 23 points, fabulous 13 assists and a playing style that reminded many of his ex-colleague in Cleveland, Kyrie Irving. An interesting fact to note is that Dellavedova has never scored 20+ points in his 215 NBA games so far, nor 10+ assists per game. If he continues playing in this fashion during the Olympic tournament then Jason Kidd, coach of Milwaukee Bucks, will have lots of headaches concerning the timing that the young Australian should have in his team.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xckVkDllNek

Patty Mills from the San Antonio Spurs team also did a great match. With 26 points he was the great enigma for the Serbian defense which was lacking the usual stability and toughness we are usually used to see by the Balkan team. Joe Ingles and Aron Baynes, both NBA players had also made a considerable contribution by scoring 10 points each. On the Serbian side Miroslav Raduljica was the top scorer with 25 points while Milos Teodosic and Bogdan Bogdanovic had 17 and 12 respectively. All of them will have to do much better on the next match against France if they want to get to a better position for the quarterfinals. For all of you who bet on sports in Brazil, the betting odds according to Australian Sportsbets for this match are 1.80 for Serbia and 1.90 for France.

Can the Boomers reach the Olympic podium?

Except in 2004 when they ended the Olympic Games in Athens on the 9th position the Australian basketball team for man has always qualified for the Olympic quarterfinal. They haven’t been as successful as their women’s team but yet made considerable results, the best being the fourth place on the Games in Seoul 1988, Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000. After the year 2000 they haven’t reached another semi-final again.

The generation of Australian basketball players we can currently see on the Olympics seem to distinguish in many respect from the previous ones. With six NBA players and two playing in European teams such as Zalgiris and Lokomotiv-Kuban, the Boomers not only have knowledge but also a capacity to do something more on these Olympics. And there is certainly no better gift to the Australian basketball fans than the so long waited Olympic medal.

Online sportsbooks in Australia such as Sportsbets, do not think this is something impossible nor very improbable. On the contrary. They give 2.88 odds for betting that Australia will win a medal on the Rio Olympics considering the Boomers to be among the top 4 teams on the Olympics together with USA, Spain and Lithuania.