Australian basketball hotspots across the globe
You'll be hard pressed to find a basketball league in the world that hasn't had an Australian flavour at some point, but there are hotspots that always seem to attract more Aussies than other places
Australian basketball talent has never been greater, and we have long pursued our ambitions well beyond the shores of our land down under. Couple that sporting ambition with an appetitie for travel, and it is hardly surprising.
Aside from the WNBA in the US, NBL1 here back home, and the occasional international competition, this seems to be the quietest time of the year for hoops around the globe.
With that in mind, what has piqued my interest in my time covering Aussie basketballers is that there seems to be some specific overseas destination hot-spots or hubs that have always seemed to attract and feature Australian representation - whether it be athletes or coaches.
It’s awesome to step back and look at the fact that Aussies have become so good and reknown for their basketball that they can use their basketball expertise as a passport to pursue their passion across the globe. Australians have done this in countless geographies and by an ever increasing number of players and coaches. The fact that they tell me about those experiences never gets old, and that they trust me with their story is a responsibility I’m always humbled by.
I’m currently on my own travels and am in the Netherlands after a 30 hour stopover in Guangzhou, China. With a pit stop in Ireland for a few Guinness’ (and not that brown dish water we serve in Australia with the Guinness label on it) around the corner, I will be contemplating this feature across four different timezones, so it feels like the right time to write it. I have the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup in Berlin in my sights. It’s been the thing I’ve been most excited for over the past four years, so I’m counting my lucky stars that I’ll be able to cover the Opals throughout the tournament.
But that’s getting a little off track.
There are these Aussie hubs of varying notoriety dotted across the globe, so I’m going to try and put them in the right order, with all things considered. Choosing between first and second has been one of the trickier things I’ve done in a while, which goes to show how easy my life is. I deliberated it over it in a few time zones, but ultimately I think this is the right decision. Anyone who’s heard me talk to Adam Webster on Unwrapped will know where my biases lie, but in this case I clearly went against them.
San Antonio Spurs, NBA
An iconic NBA franchise, rich in identity both with the team and the players themselves. They’ve always had these oblong characters, whether that’s the stars or the guys at the end of the bench. The HEB ads with Kawhi Leonard, Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker was the perfect illustration of how all these different pieces mismatched, and it worked. They even had one with our own Patty Mills.
Mills is the best place to start, along with Aron Baynes. For Mills, he played in San Antonio for a decade. He had 665 regular season caps and an additional 85 playoff games while Baynes played 139 regular season games and 22 in the playoffs across three years. During their time with the Spurs, they went to the NBA Finals twice and came back with a ring in 2014. They might have gotten a bit carried away here, but as they should.
Where the lore thickens is that Patty Mills represented Australia in three Olympics (2012, 2016, 2020 (2021)) during his tenure with the Spurs and was by far and away the biggest reason the Boomers were able to achieve their first podium finish during an Olympic games. Sure, these weren’t things that he did with the Spurs, but breaking new ground in this way while he was a member of the team adds to the allure of Mills’ stardom. No Australian will ever forget his 42 point performance against Slovenia in the bronze medal match, where he put the nation on his back and took us home.
It came during a tournament where the Boomers had lost the services of Baynes after just the second group phase game due to injury, which accelerated the emergence of Jock Landale, another Spur. San Antonio was Landale’s landing spot in the NBA a few years after playing for Partizan (who might be coming up a little later). He spent the 2021-22 season with the Spurs and has stuck in the league ever since.
Wind back nearly two decades and you find yourself at Shane Heal’s cameo at the end of 2003. A couple years earlier and you get to the man who started it all, Andrew Gaze. He played in 19 infamous games with the Spurs in the 1998-99 season, winning a title. Gaze’s Boomers and NBL career speak for themselves, but his icon status is only truly understood down under.
Someone who’s icon is understood around the world is Gregg Popovich. He leapfrogged every Aussie to play for the Spurs, taking on the role as head coach in 1996 and officially retiring last year. He won five NBA championships, two with the help of Australians. He and R.C. Buford, who has held every role under the sun with the Spurs, were pioneers of the international movement within the NBA. Whether it was bringing in an Aussie or an Argentinian, they played a huge part in propelling the international growth of the league forward.
Since 2014, the team has employed Matt Nielsen in a variety of roles. The Spurs have seen success in various forms with Nielsen on the bench, as well as gone through a very successful rebuild. They also had Jacob Chance in the lead chair for their G-League affiliate, the Austin Spurs, in the 2025-26 season before he was announced as the head coach of Melbourne United for the upcoming NBL season.
Seattle Storm, WNBA
Lauren Jackson almost single handedly landed Seattle the top spot. She was the early frontrunner for GOAT in the WNBA, not only for Australians, winning three MVP’s and two championships between 2003 and 2010, with a DPOY in there too. That’s the headline for LJ’s career in the States, but for this article, she also planted the seed for the Aussies to follow in Seattle.
But the Aussie that was drafted by Seattle at pick 57 in the 2000 draft, Katrina Hibbert, started in the Storm’s first ever WNBA game and would ensure she became the answer to a trivia night question when she scored the franchise’s first ever points in the league. Hibbert would play just 20 games in her one and only season in the WNBA - with the Storm no less.
In 2003, Sandy Brondello and Tully Bevilaqua joined Jackson who was embarking on her third season with the Storm. In 2004, Seattle won a ring with Jackson and Bevilaqua before subbing out Bevilaqua for Suzy Batkovic in the following season. Batkovic then went on WNBA sabbatical for the three seasons following while Jackson was all alone in the US northwest before Batkovic came back for one last dance in 2009. In 2010, Abby Bishop hoisted up the championship with Jackson in Seattle. Belinda Snell rounded out the single season cameos with Jackson in 2011 before LJ’s career was cut short due to injury during the 2012 season.
Aside from Bevilaqua’s concurrent seasons in 2003 and 2004, no Aussie stuck with Jackson for more than one consecutive season. 2013 would host zero Australians for the first time since Seattle’s rookie season in 2000. 2013 was also the last time Seattle didn’t have an Australian on the roster. Jenna O’Hea spent three seasons with the Storm, starting in 2014. In 2015, Bishop rejoined the franchise in Jewell Loyd’s rookie season. I don’t know why, but the fact that they overlapped with Jewell Loyd just isn’t adding up to me, but it obviously happened. In 2016, the two Aussies had their final season with the Storm and in the WNBA as they welcomed Breanna Stewart to the league.
“Rookie” Sami Whitcomb landed in Seattle in 2017 and won a ring there the next season. She would stick for four seasons with the Storm and be a veteran presence for a rookie Ezi Magbegor who has been with the franchise for the entirety of the 2020’s. Magbegor has seen two seasons with both Steph Talbot and Jade Melbourne in that time as well as Whitcomb leaving, coming back for two seasons, and leaving again.
Reading through all that, there have only been two seasons in Seattle’s history that haven’t featured an Australian so maybe I should have trusted my gut and placed them ahead of the Spurs. As is always the case, my confirmation bias was right once again.
A distinguishing factor that separates the Spurs from the Storm is that, during the Jackson years, no Aussies really stuck in Seattle, whereas there was and is a huge investment in Mills, Baynes and Nielsen as core members of San Antonio’s fabric. The Spurs are the model franchise in the world of basketball and a contender for the sporting world at large, so finding the value of having Aussies play such a substantial role in that will look different to the eye of the beholder.
Heal and Gaze are out and out icons so simply having them in a San Antonio Spurs jersey immortalises the franchise in Australian lore.
Since Whitcomb joined the Storm in 2017, every Aussie who has come since has been a contributor to the franchise for multiple years. Seattle have won two WNBA championships in that time, both with Whitcomb and the latter with Magbegor, so their Australian representation has been stronger than the Spurs over the past decade. Much like Popovich with the Spurs, Sue Bird outlasted all of the Aussies that came through, aside from Magbegor.
Between 2003 and 2010, Jackson reached higher peaks than any Aussie had with the Spurs, but that felt more like a story of LJ rather than Australia more broadly. The integration of Aussies in San Antonio also spans for longer, which is a matter of hating the game, rather than the player, as the NBA has been around for significantly longer than the WNBA.
On hating the game, the postseason in the NBA features four rounds, rather than three in the WNBA. A ring requires 16 wins, while the WNBA currently has its highest requisite win total for a championship run at nine. In turn, the quantity of games for a championship run in the NBA means more opportunities to have bigger moments, which makes the runs into the Finals feel more potent as there are more moments to be had.
For instance, when Whitcomb and the Storm won the title in 2018, she played a total of six games. In 2020, she played three games while Ezi played six. That’s 15 total games shared between the two in two championship runs.
In 2014, Patty Mills played 23 playoff games en route to his title, with Baynes at 14. Over their entire WNBA careers, Whitcomb has played 28 games and Magbegor has played 17. Mills and Baynes are in pursuit of those numbers, respectively, with their 2014 run.
Aussies know how good Whitcomb and Magbegor are and how frequently they make it to the postseason. The Opals are expected to podium at international events, a completely unfair but rightly earned expectation. In the current iteration of the team, Magbegor and Whitcomb are two of the key contributors. As it pertains to the WNBA and the NBA, this is hating the game, not the player.
Can you see now why this took me so long to choose between?
Okay, the rest of these won’t be as much of a commitment, I swear.
Partizan, Serbia
Speaking of Patty Mills…
Recent news reports suggest that Mills will be teaming up with Tony Parker once again, this time with Parker as his head coach, but Partizan was apparently VERY close to landing the Boomers legend.
Partizan probably has the best basketball crowd in the world. Either them, Panathinaikos or Olympiacos. It’s hard to pick where to start with Partizan, as every Australian that has played there arrived at such different stages of their careers.
Jock Landale might be the best, as it could very well be the start of his breakout on the global stage. During the 2018-19 season, he started his professional career in Belgrade and came out of the gates hot averaging 12.4 points, six rebounds and two assists in the ABA. In the EuroCup, he averaged 11.2 points, 6.5 boards and 63.2% from the floor in 16 games. For a first year pro starting his professional career in Serbia, that earned him a lot of respect, quickly. He was selected in the ABA League Ideal Starting Five and won the Serbian Cup during his sole stint in the league.
Wind the clock back to the 2009-10 season and Aleks Maric had taken home the cup himself, which Nathan Jawai matched the following season. In the 2022-23 season, Dante Exum found himself in Belgrade between NBA stints. Funnily enough, the last time I went to Europe, I met one of my dads cousins in Macedonia and went out for dinner with her and her husband. We decided to go back to their place because I told them I was a basketball fan and they told me there was a basketball game on. Turns out, it would be Dante Exum’s last EuroLeague game for Partizan.
All four players only played one season in Belgrade.
Tom Wilson had signed a three year deal with the team in 2017 but a contract dispute led to him never playing a game there. He would have been the longest tenured Australian to ever play at the club.
Technically, Michael Curcija also played for the club… but on the soccer team!
Japan
Japan has entered the chat in recent years. I’m aware it’s an entire country including an entire league and significantly more opportunities and roster spots, but they have made major moves with Aussies throughout the B.League.
Nick Kay and Brock Motum are the most notable players, as Kay has become a part of the furniture with Shimane Susanoo Magic. If you haven’t been keeping up with him, you probably won’t be shocked to learn he has become the captain of the club, with five consecutive years of service. Keanu Pinder also recently finished up his stint in the league with the Akita Northern Happinets.
Perhaps it is within the coaching ranks that the Australians are making their biggest impression, with Trevor Gleeson and Shawn Dennis having both made inroads in the B.League, providing a distinct Australian playing style. Andrej Lemanis has been the head coach of Altiri Chiba for the past five years, most of which has been served in the B.League 2. Dean Vickerman recently left the NBL to take charge of Nagasaki Velca, and Mick Downer is the head coach of the Akita Northern Happinets. The latest Australian to make the journey across to Japan is Robbie McKinley, joining the Sunrockers as an assistant coach.
Sopron, Hungary
This was the first geography that made me realise how little I knew about the world of basketball. Mainly because Ezi Magbegor spent her first WNBA offseason that wasn’t in the WNBL, here. Located on the border of Hungary, it’s quicker to get to the capital city of Austria and Slovakia from Sopron than it is Budapest.
Sopron has boasted a very talented depth chart of Opals beyond Magbegor; Cayla George, Steph Reid, Alice Kunek, Hanna Zavecz and Kathleen Macleod. Hungary has grown significantly in the world of women’s basketball, both domestically and internationally since they co-hosted the EuroBasket in 2015.
Elsewhere in Hungary, Abby Bishop played a season in Szekszárd. Darcee Garbin played two seasons in Diósgyőri, winning the championship in the 2023-24 season before moving to Győr the following season. Yet the green and gold of Sopron has a familiar feel to it for the Aussies, as a home away from home.
Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland
This was the second. When I learned about Sopron I realised how little I knew, but learning about Gorzów opened my eyes. I really didn’t mean that to sound poetic, I’m talking about basketball for God’s sake.
Gorzów has been an interesting landing spot, similar to Sopron, in the sense that it’s only attracted absolute ballers. Steph Talbot, Alanna Smith, Chloe Bibby, Steph Reid; who would be the fourth best player in that quartet?
The other intriguing part about Poland is that they don’t have a strong international presence, but a solid domestic league. That really isn’t something you see very often.
Poland also saw Tess Madgen and Shyla Heal playing for Lublin, Bec Allen playing for Gdynia, Hannah Hank playing for Poznań, Lauren Mansfield playing for both Polkowice and Toruń and Alice Kunek playing for both Gdynia and Toruń. None of these Aussies teamed up while they were in Poland, however.
Colleges, colleges & colleges!
This is a broad brush stroke, but we’d be here all day naming players, both men and women, who played at Saint Mary’s and Hawai’i. Davidson has had a strong Aussie connection on the women’s side in recent years, mirroring Portland.
There are other pockets that pop up here and there, like Nebraska a few years ago with Jaz Shelley and Issie Bourne, but the stars of this show are Saint Mary’s and Hawai’i.
With Adam Caporn being the first Australian to go Saint Mary’s back in 2001, there has been a seemingly unbroken chain of Aussies ever since. In Hawai’i, Patty Mills is now the general manager of the men’s program. We could list names until the cows come home, but the fact that their links start and end with Caporn and Mills tells you more than I can.
It seems that, once a basketball team gets one Aussie, they’re stuck with us forever.