BASKETBALL: Tom Humphrieswitnesses Andrew Bogut and the Australians in party mood
EVERY FOUR years you get the feeling it must be great to be an Australian. Just bloody rippa, mate. Sunshine. Kylie. And sport.
There sit the Aussies, fourth in the Olympic medal table, but punching above their weight to such an extent that it is frightening - 21 million of them winning medals at everything.
Strewth!
Whatever the distractions offered by Aussie Rules, cricket, the two rugby codes, surfing, professional soccer, pro golf, pro tennis, swimming, running, lepping and drinking (all of which the Australians excel at to a point that makes you sick) there are still enough Aussies left to do all the other weird stuff.
Since Sydney the Australians have won golds in pursuits as weird and daft as track cycling, hockey, sailing, taekwondo, water polo, beach volleyball, shooting, equestrian, archery, rowing, diving, beach volleyball and triathlon. Those are just the golds. No doubt there are silvers and bronzes lying around in sports as arcane as duck juggling, beach kayaking and toe pegging but nobody bothers to mention them.
Meanwhile, Mark Weber drives in Formula One, Grant Balfour is a top Major League baseball pitcher in the US and yesterday was a big day for Andrew Bogut, the seven-footer from Melbourne who was the number one draft pick in the NBA three years ago.
Bogut! Ha! The Aussies give all their teams nicknames and by the time you get down to basketball pretty much all the cool names are gone. The men's basketball team are The Boomers and they started these Olympics in such ignominy they looked like being a rare bad-news story for the Aussies.
The Boomers flopped to Croatia and then got whupped by Argentina. Mr Bogut was looking like a big drongo.
The thought of The Boomers falling flat drew us along to the morning session at the basketball arena yesterday, where Bogut and Co had their appointment with death or as the fixture list put it, their game with Lithuania - whom they had never beaten in European competition before.
The Aussies had pulled out of their nosedive a little by yesterday with wins over Iran (not one of the great hoops superpowers) and Russia (fairly serious operators) but Lithuania do hoops well. Since the Soviet Union broke up over artistic differences the Lithuanians have won bronze medals in Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney.
It took the Americans to deny them the bronze in Athens. They were world Under-21 champions in 2005 and so on. The Aussie coach, Brian Goorjian, put it all a little more eloquently afterwards, "They've come in and they've kicked Australia's arse for a long, long time."
Perhaps with the Australians the sunny optimism is the secret, though. As they prepared to walk the plank with the Lithuanians kicking their posterior as they went the basketball arena filled up with an unlikely number of sunny Antipodeans determined to turn the process into a party.
It's a funny thing about Beijing. You could walk for days without meeting an Aussie. Then you go to a basketball game and the place seems full of them.
Bogut is no Michael Jordan but he certainly impressed yesterday. He won the jump ball and from thereon dominated the game anytime he was on the court. He scored a three-pointer midway through the first quarter to give Australia a three-point lead and followed up a minute later with two more points and that was pretty much it.
In the second quarter, with the positively normal-sized CJ Bruton running wild, the Australians had a run to the buzzer wherein they scored 19 points without reply. The place was in party mode by the time the quarter finished with the Australians six points ahead. The third quarter began with Bogut tossing in a three-pointer and it was all over bar the whooping and singing. A gold medal act in redemption.
Bogut looked big, confident and swashbuckling and scored 23 points in just 16 minutes on the court. His counterpart on the Lithuanians side, Linas Kleiza of the Washington Wizards, had more court time but just 12 points.
And the reward?
The Aussies get to play Team USA on Wednesday!
The Olympic quarter-final. They should be dead men walking for the next 24 hours but the Aussies were thrilled, stoked, rapt! To be an Aussie is to just roll on through life, impervious to things like gravity, long odds or mortality.
"There's no game plan for the USA," said Goorjian happily. "It's everything you have done in your life, like Hoosiers, Rocky, everything you have been involved in. We get a chance to step up to the plate and take a swipe at big dog."
David v Goliath. The Boomers v Big Dog. You gotta love the guys with the pebbles.
