Shane Heal vs The Dream Team

One of my mates sent me this article last week and its a good look back at a famous moment in Australian basketball history.

The forgotten story of ... Shane Heal v the Dream Team

The Boomers guard was a thorn in the side of the NBA's biggest stars as Australia punched above their weight at the Olympics

The Dream Team III enforcer Charles Barkley was clear from the outset. “We’re here to prove we are the best country in the world. We’re the best at basketball. We have got to kill them all.”

Heading into Australia’s 1996 exhibition match against the reigning Olympic champions, peroxide-blond guard Shane ‘The Hammer’ Heal and his Boomers team-mates were excited but not daunted by the prospect of taking on the NBA’s best.

“I think it was a defining sort of a moment,” Heal tells Guardian Australia 17 years after a fiery confrontation that remains the first thing basketball fans want to discuss when they meet the veteran of four Olympic campaigns.

The Australians, a blue-collar line-up by international standards, approached the game with respect for their opponents but didn’t fear them. Heal recalls “we’d seen other teams getting photos taken with them and autographs before and after games and things like that. We said that wasn’t the Australian way and we certainly weren’t handling the game like that.”

Heal would finish the Olympic tune-up with 28 points and shoot a remarkable 8-from-13 from three-point range, many of them a remarkable distance out from the line, but it was his confrontation with the notorious Barkley that captured the attention of the media and fans alike.

Click here to read the full article.

NBA Draft '09

Yesterday was a mix of emotions ...

The good, was getting to watch the NBA draft "live" as it happened on channelsurfing.net. This is the first time I've ever been able to actually watch the draft and it was great! It would've been even better if I knew more of the players but now that I have One HD I'll get the chance to watch more college basketball from now on.

The bad, was waiting and waiting and waiting as team after team failed to pick Aussie Patrick Mills. I was e-mailing friends updates and we were all shocked and amazed at how far Patty fell. By the time we got to the second round of the draft, I was literally shaking my head as I watched team's pick players not named Mills, random euro-players that have done nothing on the world stage, players that would be "shelved" for a couple of years until they were more ready for the NBA. Meanwhile, Patty Mills who has proven himself on the world's biggest stage at the Olympics against the USA and the rest of the world's best, had to wait until pick # 55 when his name was called by the Portland Trailblazers.

I wasn't alone in my shock at the fall that Patty took, he was believe to be going mid to late in the first round. Check out the live draft coverage from Dime yesterday and all the comments about Mills ... sure, they were all probably Aussies, but that's not the point. LOL

Here are some highlights from the early picks in the 2009 NBA Draft:

Draft ‘09 Stock Watch: Patrick Mills

Nice to see Patty Mills getting some love on Dime today. With all the hype in the draft going to Ricky Rubio, Austin sticks up for Mills who has seemingly been forgotten about heading in to the NBA draft.

Patty started slowly in the draft camps but dropped 30 points at the Reebok Eurocamp that should see his stock rise again.

Click on the title below to read the full article. Good to see some Aussies in the comments representing Mills.

NBA Draft ‘09 Stock Watch: Patrick Mills | Dime Magazine (www.dimemag.com) : Daily NBA News, NBA Trades, NBA Rumors, Basketball Videos, Sneakers

By Austin Burton

Here’s what I don’t get: While you can’t make it five minutes into a Ricky Rubio argument without somebody supporting his case with the concept that he “held his own” against grown men overseas and against Team USA in the Olympics, Patrick Mills gets zero credit for not just holding his own, but putting in serious work against the Redeem Team and other international juggernauts.

In almost every major test he’s faced, Mills has proven himself. As the focal point of each NCAA defense that went against his Saint Mary’s squad this year, the sophomore Mills averaged 18.4 points on 40% from the field and 85% at the line, plus 2.2 steals per game. Mills got the better of Stephen Curry in their NIT matchup, putting up 23 points and 10 dimes in a blowout win. Before that he dropped 27 points in an NIT win over Washington State, and despite missing nine games during the season due to injury, still clocked 10 games of 20-plus points.