Dante Exum suffered an damage scare and Josh Giddey led the best way with 19 factors because the Australian Boomers cruised previous Puetro Rico 90-75 in Saturday morning’s pre-Olympics exhibition sport in Orléans (all instances AEST).
Exum late within the first quarter landed awkwardly after driving to the paint, colliding with teammate Duop Reath and showing to harm his neck as he fell to the ground grimacing in ache.
The guard remained floored for a while as he was handled to by a coach and surrounded by some teammates. He sat out the rest of the sport as a precaution resulting from a sore neck.
Exum has a gruelling damage historical past throughout his profession, so each time he hits the hardwood like that, it’s trigger for concern, significantly every week out from the Boomers’ Paris Olympics opener.
The 29-year outdated performed within the NBA season for the Dallas Mavericks throughout to June within the NBA Finals towards the Boston Celtics.
Giddey continued his promising type by means of the exhibition video games with 19 factors, 4 rebounds and 5 assists and only one turnover.
The brand new Chicago Bulls guard led 5 Boomers in double figures together with Patty Mills (15 factors, 5-of-9 from 3-point vary), Jock Landale (12 factors, six rebounds), Joe Ingles (11, 3-of-3 from 3-point vary) and Josh Inexperienced (10 factors).
Boomers give Group USA a scare | 02:17
Jack McVeigh, who this week signed a two-way contract with the Houston Rockets, dropped 9 factors off the bench and Dyson Daniels added 5 factors, three rebounds, 5 assists, two steals and a block.
Reath, who’d been out of Australia’s rotation the final three video games, performed back-up to Landale to out of the blue problem Will Magnay for the reserve centre function, with the lopsided victory a very good probability for Brian Goorjian to go deeper into his bench.
It continued the Boomers’ promising preparation for the actual stuff after difficult USA and defeating Serbia.
Australia performs its ultimate warm-up sport towards host nation France and twin tower stars Victor Wembanyama and Rudy Gobert on Monday at 5am earlier than opening its marketing campaign correct on July 27 towards Spain.