Boomer's team a 'Balls Up' ?

Takings from the two games USA and Serbia

Well, what have we learnt from these two warm up games, from the first ball up I feel we have made a hug “Balls Up” in our team selection, which many of us has predicted. The lesson learnt it is felt that “energy and enthusiasm” does not equate or even out “skill and experience”. We basically had no one that could regularly shoot the 3 ball, Patty came good in the Serbia game but until then our numbers were very poor. Let’s look at the players, from what we have seen so far out of the twelve a number are only going to get limited to no game time and what has happened to Duop Reath, 5 mins versus USA only!! Is he sick or injured or has he fallen out with the coach; the bench body language does not look good. Dellavedova looks slow and out of place and I am not sure we will see much of him; Joe has added his strength and experience but has only had a few minutes on court. Magnay has played well and seems at home with his role whilst Landale is playing the house down but he cannot play 30-40 minutes he needs support. Patty is Patty and is playing well and from the last game it looks like his shooting is back. Josh Giddey has also come good but his outside shooting still does not create a threat. Thank goodness for Daniels his defence, speed, ball movement and scoring has been fantastic and he has defended the rim on many a time pulling in rebounds he also needs to have support and Exum and Green need to get on the court more, these three are fit, fast and are the future. From what we have seen when they have been on the court either together or at different times the flow is “electric” we need to turn up that voltage!! Nick Kay has been very strong and has contributed well both in defence and offence and so far, has had good court time we need to keep him strong.

Now getting back to the selection “balls up”, sadly Jack McVeigh looks so out of place he looks like the preverbal “deer in the headlights”, his positioning and footwork is terrible and he has had trouble so far getting off a good shot only hitting one or two 3’s, if he was to be our outside shooter then we are really in trouble. To be fair has his role been adequately communicated and has he had the help he needs to settle in, hopefully someone will look at this and work with him.

So, in review Goulding and Thybulle should have been selected and Dellavedova and McVeigh left at home. These two would have given us the outside shooting strength and the extra speed and strength in defence that we are going to sadly need to progress into the competition.

From what we have seen so far it looks like that out of the twelve-player team only eight will get on the court with any regularity so some of these will have to get used to carrying the load, one has to ask is this how it is meant to be?

Looking forward with some trepidation to the pool games, they will only get harder in this strong Olympics.