Australian forward Dyson Daniels got drafted 8th overall in the 2022 NBA Draft by the New Orleans Pelicans just over a week ago. With him in the NBA, Australian basketball fans have been hoping that a time would come for an NBA match on the continent.
Andrew Bogut
| Position: | C |
| Age: | 37 |
| Height: | 213 cm |
| Weight: | 118 kg |
| Birth place: | Melbourne, Australia |
Upon being drafted, Daniels was reported pushing the league for a game in his home country. Andrew Bogut, who won an NBA title with the Golden State Warriors in 2015, offered a different perspective.
“I hope it does happen,” he said. “But I think Dyson Daniels will be in the same position I was for years of trying to ask the questions as to why we are not even thought about.”
“The NBA looks at Australia and says, ‘small country, western world, developed, we’re already making money from them and they are spending a s—load on our product’,” he said to The Herald Sun.
Bogut was sure the strongest league in the world has other countries of interest now, and the Australian market isn’t as enticing as others.
“Why would we send a team out there to invest when we can send it to the Philippines, to China, to Africa, to those nations that have much more people, where people aren’t spending as much money?’,” Bogut told.
“That’s basically what I was told by people I trust, from people around the scene,” the retired center said.
Record Australian basketball crowds of 51,218 and 52,079 packed Marvel Stadium in Melbourne for exhibition matches between Australia and the US in 2019 before the World Cup. The teams split the games in the two-match series with the USA winning the first one and Australia grabbing a win in the second.
“If I was a betting man, I would circle around 2030 for us to get one,” Bogut said. “The NBA is going to put all their chips on the table on India, China, and the Philippines and those kinds of countries because Australians are already spending the money.’”
“The USA game was kind of like: ‘Here you go, time to shut up now. We’ve given you NBA players on Australian soil’,” the famous Australian explained. “As that only happened a couple of years ago, I highly doubt an NBA game happens in Australia in the next couple of years at least.”
Bogut suspected the NBA had ‘ticked the box’ in terms of sending talent to Australia, with the likes of Jayson Tatum and Donovan Mitchell playing in the series.
“Maybe towards the end of the 2020s, maybe. But it will never be the Lakers, the Warriors, the Celtics, the Knicks. Maybe it will be Dyson Daniels’ Pelicans versus Josh Giddey’s OKC. I can see that happening but I think we are always away from it.”
Australian basketball legend Andrew Gaze agreed: “If it involves an NBA team, then we would love it”.
Australian national team defeated China 71-48 today behind a dominant 26-3 fourth quarter. Australia finished the first stage of the 2023 FIBA World Cup Asian Qualifiers 1st in Group B with 6 wins in 6 games.
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