Australia

Going through the Boomers’ history of near misses with the father of Australian basketball


“It’s our culture, at the end of the day, Australian culture, our Aussie spirit,” Patty Mills said after leading the Boomers to a breakthrough bronze medal in Tokyo.

“We represent the past and the present and the future that’s coming in. And they’ll know – we’re only here because of all of them.”

The father of Australian basketball, Lindsay Gaze, has written a letter to Basketball Victoria requesting these words of Mills be “recorded for posterity”.

The 84-year-old has always lived in the moment, with an eye to the future, but it was the way Mills honoured the past that made him so proud.

Equal parts history-maker and historian, Gaze helped shape this team.

He has been in basketball for 65 years but did not compete in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

Back then, he was a 20-year-old Australian rules footballer who took part as a non-playing reserve in the VFL/VFA vs VAFA demonstration match.

He was also an interested spectator at the Olympic amateur basketball competition, which had been going since 1936.

Australia made its debut, winning two of seven games (beating Singapore and Thailand) and finishing 12th out of 15 teams.

The magnificent Bill Russell rose above all others, captaining the gold-medal-winning United States team (Russell had been allowed to play despite signing a contract with the Boston Celtics).

Four years later, young Gaze had switched to basketball and was part of the national team that tried unsuccessfully to qualify for the Olympics in Rome.

In the 1960s, the Aussies made it to only one Olympic Games: Tokyo 1964. They played against the United States for the first time, losing 78-45.

Twelve men in Australian basketball jerseys pose for a photo on an outdoor court.
Lindsay Gaze (front far right, kneeling) is known as the father of basketball in Australia.(

Supplied: Lindsay Gaze

)

America, highlighted by future NBA star and US senator Bill Bradley, went on to win its sixth consecutive gold medal, beating the Soviet Union in the deciding game.

“What impressed me was the friendliness of the Japanese people,” Gaze said of his only Olympics as an athlete. He thought “the world coming to Tokyo” was a marvellous feat given it was not so long after World War II.

Australia finished ninth in basketball but did well enough to push powerful Yugoslavia to overtime in one of the group matches.

Back home, Gaze continued working in his role as general manager of the Victorian Basketball Association at Albert Park Basketball Stadium, overseeing the game’s growth.

Fifteen years earlier, registrations had numbered 1,500; now there were thousands of players.

Significantly and without fanfare, Lindsay and Margaret Gaze began having children. Janet was born in 1962 and Andrew came along in 1965. The sporting pay-off would come later.

When Australia returned to the Olympics in 1972, Gaze was coach.

The Munich basketball tournament featured America’s first loss (ending a record 63-0 streak) to the Soviet Union in a controversial gold medal game.

The Aussies came eighth, after strong wins over Brazil and West Germany.

Leading scorer for Gaze’s team and second-leading scorer for the competition was Eddie Palubinskas.

The sweet shooter was even more prolific in Montreal 1976, where he led all scorers at the Games and Australia made the quarter-finals for the first time, ending up in eighth position.

In a game against Mexico, Palubinskas had a record 48 points (he later played in the American college leagues and in retirement was a shooting coach for Shaquille O’Neal).

The Boomers were improving. A big opportunity came with the next Olympic Games, hosted by Moscow, boycotted by the United States.

“In 1980 we should’ve been playing for a medal, we just got shafted,” he said.

Australia was in the group stage with Italy, Cuba, and Sweden. The Aussies beat Italy by seven points. Cuba beat Australia by the same margin.

The only way the Aussies could miss out on playing for a medal in the semi-final round was if Italy beat Cuba by seven points – and that’s what happened.

Italy ended up winning the silver medal.

Australia finished eighth with a 5-2 record. Tasmanian Ian Davies topped the competition scorers’ list with 209. Danny Morseu became the first Torres Strait Islander to represent Australia in the sport.

Another Gaze arrives

Coaching in his fourth Olympics at Los Angeles in 1984, Gaze created some controversy by selecting his son Andrew, 19, in the Australian team.

Lindsay Gaze sits next to son Andrew Gaze as they announce their retirement from basketball and the Melbourne Tigers.
Lindsay and Andrew Gaze are two of the most famous names in Australian basketball.(

AAP: Julian Smith

)

“The accusations of nepotism were there,” he said.

Andrew came off the bench against Brazil in the first game, made an interception, put the ball around his back, spun around with it and completed an uncontested lay-up.

“Not bad for a rookie,” one of the Australian officials whispered to his father.

The critics fell silent.

Gaze Sr had told his team in 1984 that if they could beat Brazil, they could win a medal.

The coach was an atheist, but not against recruiting some help from outside the squad.

Toward the end of the fourth quarter, the Boomers’ guards, including the teenager Gaze and Phil Smyth, sent “some prayers” from long range.

“Almost every prayer was answered,” Gaze Sr said.

“We were breaking the hearts of the Brazilians. As I was walking out of the stadium, the security guy at the door said to me, ‘God is an Australian.'”

Alas, the Aussies (4-4) finished the tournament in seventh place.

Andrew Gaze would end up a five-time Olympian and second all-time Olympic scorer (789) behind Brazilian Oscar Schmidt (1093). (Retired Australian champion Lauren Jackson is the top scorer in the women’s competition, which made its Olympic debut in 1976.)

A new era began, and Lindsay’s job as national coach was finished.

Adrian Hurley became the Boomers’ coach for Seoul 1988, which introduced the sporting public to new players, including teenagers Mark Bradtke, Andrew Vlahov and Luc Longley.

The extra size on the court — complementing Ray Borner’s role — enabled Australia (4-4) to qualify for its first bronze medal game, which it lost to the United States (the Soviet Union won the gold in the last amateur competition).

Aussies reaching the NBA

The next 12 years were Australia’s most successful, as basketballers from Down Under started to get experience in the NBA.

Young athletes like Shane Heal and Chris Anstey were strong additions to the Boomers’ desperate efforts, but they could not quite make the podium: Barcelona 1992 (sixth), Atlanta 1996 (fourth) and Sydney 2000 (fourth) were near misses.

Two men stand close together and one gestures with his fingers.
Andrew Bogut and Andrew Gaze both commentated on the Boomers’ journey through the Tokyo Olympic Games.(

AAP: Dean Lewins

)

Lindsay Gaze, who spent the 1990s in charge of the powerful Melbourne Tigers, said it was a shame “they weren’t able to get the reward they deserved”.

“You win you deserve it, you lose you’re very unlucky. Things have gotta go your way,” he said.

The next time the Aussies were in the top four was in Rio in 2016.

Patty Mills, who had come into the Boomers squad as a teenager in 2008 and then led all scorers at London 2012, scored 30 points against Spain in the bronze medal game.

Patty Mills is called for a foul in the dying seconds of the bronze-medal basketball match at Rio 2016
Patty Mills (right) was called for a costly foul in the last seconds of the bronze medal game against Spain in 2016.(

AP: Eric Gay

)

World-class Andrew Bogut, in his third Games, helped Mills carry the team admirably. Australia still lost 89-88.

Three years later, the Boomers lost the world championships bronze medal game to France.

Tokyo 2020 was their next chance.

Gaze Sr said Mills and his team did the right thing by aiming for nothing less than gold in Tokyo.

Psychologically, he reckoned, it was important to try to win the whole thing.

An excellent tournament preceded yet another bronze play-off, this time against Slovenia.

Gaze Sr was not confident at the start of the contest, but his hopes soared when he saw Slovenia’s tired superstar Luka Doncic.

“I could see he was suffering. He looked like he was at the absolute dead end of a tough campaign,” he said.

Not a one-man team

With astonishing fitness and determination, Patty Mills took control, becoming the first person to score more than 40 points in an Olympic medal game. He ended up with 42 — a number that will stay with him as a tribute for the rest of his life. He also had nine assists.

On Monday, Mills was named in FIBA’s Olympic All-Star Five alongside US star Kevin Durant (MVP), Spain’s Ricky Rubio, French centre Rudy Gobert and Doncic.

“He’s a small guy in a big world,” Gaze said.

Patty Mills goes in for a lay-up in Australia's basketball bronze-medal game against Slovenia at the Tokyo Olympics.
Patty Mills scored 42 points to help Australia secure the medal.(

AP: Eric Gay

)

“He’s got some tools. He’s very quick laterally, he’s got a good eye, and good touch. The other thing is he creates scoring opportunities for himself and others with his defence.”

Of the captain’s post-match interview, Gaze said: “I just think he was outstanding as a role model and, if you like, as an inspiration to all who might follow.

“He talked about – we’re playing for the past, we’re playing for the present, we’re playing for the future … it’s the legacy for Australia and the sport. It’s magnificent. Then he talked about Uncle Danny, Danny Morseu, who was on teams I coached. So he wasn’t forgetful about his origins and the way that the sport is and the country is.”

The former coach made special mention of the other bronze medallist Boomers.

“There was a general understanding that Patty was carrying the team on his back,” he said.

“[But] we shouldn’t forget the contribution made by everyone else. There were some great players on that team. Each made big plays at very critical times.”

He complimented Jock Landale, Nick Kay, Chris Goulding, Matisse Thybulle and Dante Exum, and he said Joe Ingles played “his best game of the tournament” when it mattered most.

Matisse Thybulle dunks the basketball in the bronze medal game between Australia and Slovenia at the Tokyo Olympics.
Matisse Thybulle provided a massive boost for the Boomers, particularly defensively.(

AP: Eric Gay

)

Gaze also gave high praise to coach Brian Goorjian for rallying the troops.

“To me, from the outside, it looked like they were on a mission,” Gaze said.

“They were supporting each other, knowing that without that communal support it wasn’t going to get done. It wasn’t like they were superior athletically but collectively the sum of the parts was stronger.”

He attributed this to “Australia”.

“The attitude of the Australians has always been of underdogs at that level, always earning respect but … falling a little bit short. And it looked like they were on a mission to prove that was wrong,” he said.

“To come so close so many times, it was as if there was a general belief that this was the time.”

In lockdown, Gaze watched the game on television with his wife Margaret.

His son was commentating.

They were able to speak to each other briefly on the phone.

As soon as the game and the interview with Mills ended, Lindsay turned off the telly and went to bed, missing Andrew’s emotional review of the game on Channel Seven.

Instead, Lindsay taped the show and watched it the next day.

“That’s when all the emotions were revealed,” he said.



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