The story of the men’s international basketball world on Saturday night was the United States getting shocked by Nigeria in exhibition action, nine years after the U.S. set an Olympic record with an 83-point win over Nigeria at the 2012 London Games. Nigeria played a tremendous game, led by hot shooting from Gabe Vincent and Caleb Agada, who combined for 38 points, while the U.S. offense struggled mightily in their first game action together.
However, later in the evening on the same floor in Las Vegas, Argentina and Australia would meet in the second game of the night and would likewise produce some late drama in their first exhibition game of the week. Like the early game, offenses struggled to consistently put up points in what was an 84-84 game with seconds to play and the Boomers taking the ball out with 2.5 seconds to play. However, unlike the United States which struggled to create anything resembling a decent look on their final possession, Australia dialed up a beauty of an inbounds play to get the ball in the hands of their star, Spurs guard Patty Mills.
Mills inbounded the ball and then immediately sprinted to it to take a handoff and launch a high-arcing, contested three that found the bottom of the net as the buzzer sounded to give Australia a thrilling victory in their first tune-up game in Vegas.
BALA FOR THE WIN
@Patty_Mills led @BasketballAus to an opening victory vs. Argentina in exhibition play at the buzzer last night in Vegas! pic.twitter.com/lhZallEdPE
— San Antonio Spurs (@spurs) July 11, 2021
It was a stark contrast to how the Americans tried to find a game-tying three earlier in the night with nothing even approaching a discernible action, as the ball went from one player to another 35 feet from the hoop, unable to even pretend to be a shooting threat. Here, the Aussies knew exactly who the ball needed to go to and Mills delivered a beauty to avoid overtime and start the Boomers Olympic journey off on the right foot.
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