Patty Mills leads Boomers to Olympic bronze four decades in the making

Cometh the hour, cometh Patrick Sammy James Mills.

But really, who else? Australia’s Tokyo 2020 co-flag bearer, a basketball player who made his Olympic debut in 2008 as a teenager and had the highest average point scoring at the London 2012 Olympics. An Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) development product who has given blood, sweat and tears for his country for over a decade, and won the NBA finals with the San Antonio Spurs in 2014. The face of Australian basketball.

Yet also the Patty Mills who thought he had made the stop that would win Australia the bronze medal against Spain in Rio 2016, only to have it called – questionably – as a foul. The player who had to live with the disappointment of that foul and the resulting one-point loss for five years, until Saturday night.

In Australia’s fifth men’s bronze medal match in Olympic history, with the nation having never previously collected an Olympic medal in men’s basketball, Mills delivered. His stat-line at the Saitama Super Arena against Slovenia – 42 points, nine assists and three rebounds – was his best performance in national team colours. It was also one of the greatest individual efforts in Australian basketball history.

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Against a difficult opponent, Mills put the Australian team on his back. Other Boomers were impressive – Matisse Thybulle has been the break-out star of these Games for Australia, while Joe Ingles contributed 16 points. But no-one came close to matching Mills.

He was all but unplayable. One minute he was hitting long-range threes, the next dancing to the basket like a whirling dervish. He knew when to move the ball and when to hold it. He was both the conductor and the star violinist. This was Mills at his absolute best. He helped Australia to win every quarter, playing just shy of 38 of the entire 40 minutes. The final score, 107-93, against a Slovenian team that had lost to France by just one point in the semi-final, was testament to Mills’ relentless energy.

It is hard to overstate the significance of this victory for the Boomers. Since the 1980s, each generation of Australian basketballers has been moulded at the AIS’s residential program in Canberra. Young men and women arrive in their early teens and depart as quality players who value, above all, national team minutes. For the women, the Opals, this conveyor-belt of talent has led to medals, lots of them. The team has won three Olympic silver medals and two bronze, plus five medals at the Fiba World Cup (including gold in 2006).

The Boomers, despite the presence of a handful of elite players each generation, had never won a medal in international basketball. Five losses in Olympic semi-finals, four in Olympic bronze medal matches and one in a World Cup bronze medal match. Until Saturday night.

The elation and emotion after the final siren said it all. So did the tears of Andrew Gaze, a Boomers legend, in a television interview back home. For over four decades, Australia’s male basketballers have strived for this moment. They always came up short. Not this time. “This is the fucking standard now,” screamed Mills in the post-match huddle with his teammates.

The medal is a fitting send-off for a golden generation of Australian basketballers. It came one year too late for Andrew Bogut, who retired after the Games were postponed in 2020. And Aron Baynes, the team’s powerful centre, was missing through an injury suffered earlier in the tournament. But for Mills, Matthew Dellavedova and Ingles – among the best players Australia has ever produced – their moment had come. All are over 30; they are unlikely to return together for another Olympics (although few would bet against Mills returning for Paris, in what would be his fifth Games).

This bronze medal also heralded the rise of a new generation for the Boomers. Thybulle, in his first tournament with the team, has been immense. Jock Landale has shown that his recent acquisition by San Antonio was shrewd business. Dante Exum, currently without an NBA team, has done his contract hopes the world of good. The absence of superstar Ben Simmons – a late withdrawal – no doubt hurt the Boomers, particularly in the semi-final encounter with the United States. But they have won bronze without their most individually-talented player. That is some feat.

At the Saitama Super Arena, this was a win not just for 12 players and three coaches in Tokyo. This was a victory four decades in the making, even since Dr Adrian Hurley and Patrick Hunt laid the foundations of the AIS basketball program in 1981 (fittingly, Hunt was in the stands). This is a win that vindicates the efforts of every single teenager to pass through that locker-room in Canberra, and every single player to pull on the Boomers singlet.

Ultimately, it was a win for all of Australia. After the medal ceremony, clad in their green and gold tracksuits, the Boomers posed on centre-court with three flags: the Australian flag, the Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag. It was a reflection of a team that values diversity and strives for a better nation. It was a tribute to the one and only Patty Mills.