[3rd place] France - Australia

[LTbotd]

I saw them play the aussies they didnt impress me at all, just got lucky with some cooked referring at the end for both olympics and world cup. The spanish are old and slow and wont do anything in the olympics. There best player is ricky rubio whose a bit of a dud in the NBA

Sure, Australia is much much more younger and faster. And Mills is an NBA superstar sure.

[eurorefsarecheats]

Sure, Australia is much much more younger and faster. And Mills is an NBA superstar sure.

TBH the French team looks a lot better than the spanish for the future and could possibly challenge US. What are the spanish gonna do when the Gasols retire? Mills is miles better than Rubio as well. I guess Simmons, Exum,Bolden Broekhoff will be in the olympics with the others so we should be much stronger next year

[soulis79]

Albicy was a disaster in previous games but today with his treys helped France to reach podium. Batum did his best game in the same time that Fournier looked very tired and Gobert disoriented.

From Australia tiredness was obvious. In the last two games Baynes was bad, today Dellavedova did't help. So only Ingles stepped up today.

P.S. I must admit that Kay looked bad in exhibition games. I criticised him a lot but he gave all he got in the last games. On the other hand Landale was a disappointment.

[madmax]

Sure, Australia is much much more younger and faster. And Mills is an NBA superstar sure.

If Daddy Mills is NBA superstar, then I'm most probably a rockstar, just didn't know it yet...

[soulis79]

Next year Simmons will start and Ingles will come from the bench. That looks logical. The other scenario is that Simmons will play as a four alongside with Ingles. Broekhoff was a loss indeed but i don't think Bolden will show up again.

[Darrell Armstrong]

Once aussies stop shifting the blame to anybody else and start working on handling these high-pressure games better, they may break the curse. Until then, 0-10 in medal games and counting. They likely had the best team, but were the weakest mentally of the top-4. Having your best players go for 30 minutes all tournament is not a good recipe for success. You can see they were gassed in the second half. Dellavedova was suffering from cramps at the end of the game vs. Spain, and only had 48 hours to recover.

[achinet]

What are the spanish gonna do when the Gasols retire?

I think you don't know nothing about Spanish base national teams. This year in eurobasket u20 we were silver. In that championship Alocén was in the best team award. This year in eurobasket u18 spain won. Santiago Aldama was mvp, Garuba and Aldama were in the best team. (They said Aldama as next Pau Gasol, that is too much, but if he will be half of Pau he will be great). This year in eurobasket u16 spain won. Ruben Domínguez was mvp and he and Juan nuñes were in the best team.

So, what are the spainsh gonna do when the Gasols retire?. Whell that is the response.

[Roofman]

@Darrell Armstrong. maybe the poster above was being nasty and focusing on referring, my apologies, but obviously it is frustrating to keep losing in medal games. If I can shed some perspective here, you contradicted yourself by saying that Australia was the weakest team mentally in the top four, but were gassed in the second half. Given what was available, I think Australia (in reflection) overachieved in the preliminary rounds, beating Lithuania and France, surviving banana peel games against Canada (especially) and the DR, then the Checks. Apparently they did not practice on off days because of the need to be mentally fresh(er) later in the tournament (meaning they also couldn't iron out turnover issues). They absolutely tried to play the right way, being among tournament leaders both in assists, scoring and % of baskets assisted on, they can/could win high scoring games or slugfests if required. Perhaps being scouted heavier in the later parts of the tournament caught up with them, as they got forced into many late shotclock situations in the last two games, and seemed to look to play the system, and not actually create, apart from Mills, who was caught in two minds about creating for himself because others struggle to and hoping someone gets sprung open late in the clock.

I will say that I feel Australia have never been as mentally locked in as they were in this tournament, I think losing Cooks and then Bolden AFTER the 12 was announced galvanised the team. Lots of people complain about missing players, but after cuts are made coaches have to change their plans on the fly, which is different to say Canada or the US not having their players turn up (apologies to Kuzma, Oluynk and anybody on the North American teams who cared). The 0-10 record is not great either, but put in perspective, there were not a lot of winnable games there. Let's see.
1988- lost SF to Yugoslavia, bronze medal game to the last ever US amateur team. Team was overwhelmed. In fact, they were really semi-professionals playing battle hardened players in more seasoned competitions.
1996- lost SF to US after leading for most of first half, one of the Yanks tougher games in that pre- 2002-6 era, lost bronze medal game to Lithuania, no Luc Longley to play honest defence on Sabonis, who compiled 30+ points, 15+ rebounds against no one taller than 208cms.
2000- finally winnable games on paper in a home Olympics. Team was gassed after losing first two games to Nash led Canada and Yugoslavia, recovered and had absolutely nothing to give in SF vs France and bronze against Lithuania. Idiot coach Barnes favoured Heal throughout tournament, who essentially bricked us out of the tournament and couldn't guard a statue.
2016- we know what happened. SF was winnable, but Serbs denied supply while begging Ingles to shoot. Bronze match we know about. Overall maximum six of those games were winnable, really four when the internal shambles of 2000 were considered. I don't blame Lemanis a lot, but feel the bottom three of Gliddon, Sobey and Barlow needed to play some spot minutes early in the tournament to better prepare for the medal rounds, some European NTs run 10-11 players.

Overall, casual Interbasket or even Australian fans can be disappointed, I don't really blame the reffing, call with 8 secs left on Bogut in SF was perplexing but that happens. I do feel that if Australia can break through, they will be very, very tough to beat from that point on, may not happen in my life. Also affirms the quality of the Australian NBL as a competition, with Bogut, Kay, Goulding, Creek and NZ players Corey Webster(third in tournament scoring), Abercrombie etc in the league and freelancing in either Europe or the NBA after the March conclusion to the season.

[Blöhm]

Congrats to France for bronze medal.
Positive tournament in the end even if we miss some important players such as Heurtel, Moerman, Causeur (not sure he is in good terms with Collet), Lauvergne.
Good tournament cause we qualified for OLympics games, we shown good basket ball, we managed to beat USA (wherever people say, we did it and I am sure this helped other teams for final victory), we won bronze medal.
Some players will continue to improve ( Ntilikina, Fournier, Gobert). And with the missing players, we will come back stronger next year.

[Darrell Armstrong]

Congrats to France for bronze medal.
Positive tournament in the end even if we miss some important players such as Heurtel, Moerman, Causeur (not sure he is in good terms with Collet), Lauvergne.
Good tournament cause we qualified for OLympics games, we shown good basket ball, we managed to beat USA (wherever people say, we did it and I am sure this helped other teams for final victory), we won bronze medal.
Some players will continue to improve ( Ntilikina, Fournier, Gobert). And with the missing players, we will come back stronger next year.

I agree. Looking forward to a renewed rivalry between France and Spain in the coming years.

[kartog]

Australia kept shooting themselves in the foot whenever opportunities to seize the game came up. Luc Longley's face on-camera said it all.

Congrats to France, my prediction was spot on.

Failing to win in regulation by a mere free throw, playing through 2 OTs and then finally losing the chance at a historic gold (and a guaranteed silver) is probably going to play with the Aussie's minds a hell of a lot more than France losing by a bigger margin. I think Les Bleus are going to deny Australia a medal yet again.