Australia’s best basketball player Ben Simmons announced via Twitter today that he will don the green and gold for the upcoming FIBA World Cup in China which continues on the 31st of August.
— Ben Simmons (@BenSimmons25) May 15, 2019
There has been persistent focus from the media on whether Ben would play for the team or not with word from Simmons camp suggesting Australia’s national program would need to “do more” in order for him to get him to agree to play in the FIBA World Cup or the Olympics.
Patty Mills implored Basketball Australia in February to meet the “basic needs” that he felt would convince Simmons, a member of the 2019 NBA All-Star team to agree to play for Australia in this year’s World Cup.
“There’s quite a significant gap between the NBA and Basketball Australia in terms of catering to players’ needs so we can perform at a high level night in, night out,” Mills said in February.
“There are some concerns that Basketball Australia either don’t want to or can’t cater to these basic needs. We have upped our game and level, so we expect the other side of our team to be able to the same.”
These concerns seem to have been addressed internally and Australia will be able to see our brightest basketball star play for his country in three months when Australia face USA at Marvel Stadium in a blockbuster game to be played in front of 100,000 fans over two sold out games.
Neither squad for Australia or USA have been officially selected, but expectations are that they’ll both be relatively strong with all of Australia’s NBA talent making themselves available for selection and the majority of the USA’s high profile players doing the same.
One player who has withdrawn himself from playing in the World Cup is LeBron James, the face of Nike who also is a sponsor of Ben Simmons. Simmons agreeing to play in the World Cup is thought to be a huge boost for Nike who desperately needed a strong face in the tournament after James decided not to.
With the huge opportunity for shoe sales in the Asian market it’s expected many of the heavily sponsored NBA players affiliated with Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, etc have been encourage by their shoes brands to play for their national teams in the World Cup where possible.
There is a huge gap in Chinese shoe market to fill and this opportunity for Simmons’ brand could see a huge boost for his profile and shoes sales as a result of being perhaps the number one for Nike in what will be the largest and most watched International Basketball tournament in history.
Based on what players have made themselves available for the tournament and those who have considerable shoe deals the roster for Australia’s two games in Melbourne against the USA is likely to be very close to this:
Boomers
USA
Anthony Davis
Stephen Curry
DeMarcus Cousins
Kevin Durant
James Harden
Kyrie Irving
Tobias Harris
Kyle Lowry
Chris Paul
Gordon Hayward
John Wall
Klay Thompson