The first ever U17 Boys FIBA World Championships has recently been held in Hamburg, Germany and the tournament for girls at the same age will take place later this month.  This tournament showcased the amazing basketball talent of kids as young as 15 years of age on the International stage.  South Australian players from the Under 14 age group with real goals to develop into a world class athletes can now get excited about being able to see a closer timeframe to begin the experience of the pathway to International Basketball.

The Australian team that competed in the Championships finished a credible sixth out of twelve teams with a four and four win/loss record including the crossover games and finals.  Other than the game against the United States the Australians showed great potential for their country and competed strongly in all games. They also displayed great mental toughness for winning the very close games.

South Australian player, Daniel Carlin, who plays club basketball for the Central Districts Lions, performed strongly for his country during the tournament.  He showed that he truly has the work ethic, athleticism and sheer strength to achieve a very high standard of international play and South Australian basketball can be proud of him.  While his statistics improved as the tournament went on what they don’t reflect is his physical defensive presence, ability to guard on ball screens (a very important factor at this level) and the constant trouble he caused for other teams by using his strength and moves around the basket to draw fouls.

The Australian boys, which pride themselves on team work, mateship and toughness, epitomised the Australian culture in their game style.   This was probably the most interesting aspect of the tournament, with each team reflecting their own countries culture and style in the way they played from the razzle dazzle, and at times circuslike performances, of the United States team to the highly skilled Serbians, to the highly drilled and intelligent Latvians.

The International game showed that whilst there were still lots of very big and tall players, opportunities were opening up for smaller players to succeed at International level.  With some of the best players of the tournament being six foot three and under the small man can now be inspired to work hard and develop their skills to achieve to compete at this level of basketball.  Toughness and physicality were traits of the best teams with small guards showing they are not afraid to get to the basket and score against the tall timber time and time again.

The fanfare that goes with a World Championship is something that all the players involved absolutely loved to experience at such a young age.  With the crowd packed with scouts from the United States and Europe it was a great opportunity for players to continue to come under the radar of scouts.  Many College fans out there will know names such as Johnny Dawkins, George Ravelling, Billy Donavon, John Callipari and many more that were there scouting the talent and of course with the tournament being  in Germany, Dirk Nowitzki dropped in for the finals and presentations. 

One other interesting aspects of the trip was hearing from former South Australian, Australian Junior player and Assistant SA Metro Coach Matt Dodson about the German basketball system.  Matt is a fulltime coach in Germany with the Artland Dragon’s NBBL (equivalent to Under 23s) program and also works in a role not dissimilar to a Junior Coaching Director with the club’s Junior club called QTSV.  Due to the size of Germany young players are able to test themselves in a whole of nation type competition.  Matt certainly enjoys a much larger junior development budget than what he was used to whilst in Australia.  In the senior competition, the Bundesleige in which the Artland Dragons compete in, the teams have team salary caps of around $4.5 Million Euro (roughly $6.5 Million Australian) per year.  According to Matt the reasons why Australia is seen as been able to consistently bat so far above its weight in International basketball is because of the toughness of our players (maybe due to our Aussie Rules football culture), quality of coaches we have in the country as well as the strong/consistent development and Talent Identification established from the Intensive Training Centres around Australia.