Before the Boomers were Olympic contenders, before Patty Mills lit up Tokyo, before Josh Giddey was throwing no-look dimes in the NBA, Australian basketball was still finding its feet.
This first episode in our Australian basketball history series takes you from the sport’s quiet arrival via the YMCA in the early 1900s, through decades of hard lessons, dominant runs in Oceania, and the birth of the Boomers in Melbourne 1956.
We meet the unlikely heroes — like the Mormon Yankees, an American amateur team that toured Australia in the ’50s, beating almost every Olympic squad they faced. We revisit the heartbreak of close Olympic losses, the scoring brilliance of Eddie Palubinskas in ’76, and the moment a teenage Andrew Gaze stepped onto the floor in 1984.
From New Zealand rivalries to record-breaking wins over tiny island nations, these were the years that shaped the Aussie basketball identity: relentless, scrappy, and always chasing the next level.
It’s a story that connects directly to today’s golden era of Australian hoops — a time when the Boomers have their first Olympic medal, the Opals are world powers, and Aussie names fill NBA and WNBA rosters. But every pass, every shot, and every dream traces back to these early decades.
This is how it all began.
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