With reports that the Tokyo Olympics will be postponed until 2021 due to COVID19 Pandemic, we look at the impact that this change will have on the Australian Boomers and their medal prospects.
Firstly, we might have to be thankful for the wait because if the 2020 Olympics were to go ahead as planned, there is little hope that NBA players would actually play at the Olympics in July.
Current projections from the NBA has the league resume its season in June and finish up in August. It is hard to imagine a situation where NBA GMs are happy with their multi-million-dollar assets flying off to Japan at a crucial point in their season and also during the grips of a pandemic. A year’s wait makes NBA attendance more feasible which would be a win for all basketball fans.
Australia’s biggest NBA star Ben Simmons was on board to play in his first Olympics this year but a recent back injury resulted in him losing at least two-months of playing time due to what 76ers medical staff termed “nerve impingement”.
The upside of a postponed Olympics is an extra year between now and the tournament gives Ben ample time to recover from this injury.
However, while the games being postponed may be a blessing for the injured Ben Simmons it’s something which may mean we have already seen Andrew Bogut’s last game in the Boomers’ green and gold.
Bogut had hinted at winning and NBL championship and an Olympic medal and then calling it a day but 2020 will end without him having reached either goal. By 2021 Bogut will be a 37-year-old, 16-year NBA and NBL veteran with a long history of injuries. His experience and leadership would still be of huge benefit to the Boomers but whether his body can continue playing at an international level with another 12 months on his odometer is yet to be seen.
On the other side of the 2019/20 NBL Finals ledger, there’s a good chance Bryce Cotton is an Australian by the time the 2021 Olympics roll around. And while he might not be a walk-in certainty for selection, his consistency and potency at NBL level would surely earn strong consideration as a back up to Patty Mills at the two spot.
It’s easy to imagine Bryce playing Robbin to Patty’s Batman, picking up where each other left off to keep the scoreboard ticking over. But how his selection might mesh with the legalities of selecting Mattise Thybulle, who is also an American-born Australian citizen remains to be seen.
2020 Draft-Prospect Josh Green doesn’t figure too highly in current projections for a 2020 Olympic team, but by 2021 he should be a bonafide NBA player with a season’s worth of top-level experience under his belt.
A single NBA season is enough to elevate him from being a project player at best, to being a likely contributor at Olympic level. There will be a lot of competition at Green’s position but the smart money would be on Josh Green making the 12.
A year can be a long time in basketball. And the thing about postponing the Olympics for a year is that inevitably everyone is a year older. That’s not so bad for a 20-year-old Josh Green but isn’t quite so great for a 33-turning-34-year-old Joe Ingles. Patty Mills, Joe Ingles, Aron Baynes and Matthew Dellavedova, who form a core that has been together since the 2010 World Cup, will all be firmly in their twilight, in basketball terms, by the time 2021 rolls around. They’ve fallen agonizingly short of glory – TWICE – and will no doubt be chomping at the bid for one last chance to give Australia her maiden medal.
The question that will define the Olympics for the Boomers will be how much can the older-guard give and are the new kids on the block ready to carry the flame?