{"id":864202,"date":"2026-08-22T09:20:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T09:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/864202\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T09:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T09:20:15","slug":"gaze-selects-his-world-cup-smokey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/864202\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaze selects his ‘World Cup smokey’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month, more than 20 of the country’s top men’s basketballers congregated in Melbourne for a player-led Boomers camp<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Headlining the players in attendance were NBA stars Josh Giddey, Dyson Daniels and Jock Landale. <\/p>\n

The other name that everyone was talking about was three-time NBA All Star Ben Simmons.<\/p>\n

The first overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft, who had the past NBA season off to recover from injuries, turned plenty of heads during the CourtSide Melbourne camp. <\/p>\n

So much so, Boomers legend Andrew Gaze believes Simmons, who stated his desire to debut for the senior national men’s team<\/a>, should represent the green and gold at the 2027 FIBA World Cup.<\/p>\n

“My smokey pick to make the Boomers next year in the World Cup is Ben Simmons,” Gaze said to NBL Media.<\/p>\n

“We’ve been hoping for many, many years he’d pull on a green and gold jersey.<\/p>\n

“It appears as though he’s rekindled his desire, and motivation to play at the highest level.<\/p>\n

“Hopefully, we can see him at his best, and representing the Boomers.”<\/p>\n

Gaze’s comments follow those of potential teammate Giddey, who believes the 2020 All NBA Third Team selection would be an asset to the Boomers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“He looks really good, that’s the first thing I noticed when I saw him,” Giddey told 9 News Adelaide’s Will Crouch.<\/p>\n

“Obviously he hasn’t played professional basketball for probably the last year or so, but he’s stayed in shape by continuing to work out; he looked really good at the camp.<\/p>\n

“He’s still got soft hands, while being powerful, explosive and getting downhill whenever he wants.<\/p>\n

“Ben knows we always want him part of the green and gold, and if he wants to be there, he puts his hand up [to play]; he’s going to be in the team.<\/p>\n

“Hopefully he is, as he’s going to be a massive part of what we do going forward.<\/p>\n

“I’m confident he’ll be there at the next big tournament.”<\/p>\n

Current and past Boomers including Daniels<\/a>, Landale and Andrew Bogut<\/a>, as well as head coach Adam Caporn<\/a>, have also thrown their support behind Simmons playing for Australia at both the World Cup but also the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this month, more than 20 of the country’s top men’s basketballers congregated in Melbourne for a player-led…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":864203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-864202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}