Ten NBA Stars Join Australia’s Olympic Squad for Paris 2024

Ten players from Australia’s bronze medal-winning Tokyo 2020 team, including Patty Mills, Joe Ingles, Josh Green, Dante Exum, and Jock Landale, have been nominated to an enlarged 22-man squad for the Paris Olympics.

Coach Brian Goorjian’s squad consists of ten NBA-based players, including Josh Giddey and Dyson Daniels. The roster will be reduced to 12 players before a pre-Games training camp in July.

Brooklyn Nets point guard Ben Simmons was not named to the squad because he is currently recovering from back surgery. Simmons has never represented Australia in the Olympics, but he had planned to compete in Paris before his most recent setback.

The Boomers finished 10th at the 2023 FIBA World Cup, but as the highest-finishing Oceania team, they qualified automatically for Paris.

Goorjian will lead the Boomers to their fourth Olympics as head coach.

“The World Cup in 2023 marked a new beginning for the Boomers,” Goorjian stated on Thursday. “We were able to introduce some new faces and identify areas that we needed to advance and improve, We’ve been actively monitoring the Aussie players across international leagues in the U.S., Europe, and Asia as well as domestically in the NBL and we’re confident in the potential chemistry of this list.”

Australia will compete in Group A at the Paris Games. The only confirmed opponent in that group so far is Canada.

The remaining two teams will emerge via qualifying tournaments. One is in Greece—either Greece, Slovenia, New Zealand, Croatia, Egypt, or the Dominican Republic—while the other is in Spain—either Spain, Lebanon, Angola, Finland, Poland, or the Bahamas.

On July 27, Australia will face Spain in a qualifying match. There are twelve teams in the group stage, with eight advancing to the medal round. The men’s gold medal final is set for August 10 at the Bercy Arena in Paris.