Josh Giddey had a debut to remember as Australia mauled Finland, 98-72, for a rousing start to their FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 campaign, Friday at the Okinawa Arena.<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old point guard finished with 14 points, 9 rebounds, and 8 assists, becoming the first player in the 21st century to have more than 10 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists in their first World Cup game since the legendary LeBron James in 2006.<\/p>\n
Giddey joined hands with the Patty Mills and Joe Ingles in turning the game around late in the second quarter, where they\u00a0wiped\u00a0out an eight-point deficit and headed into the break holding a 45-40 lead.<\/p>\n
Momentum would shift on the Boomers’ way as the crew began to pull away in the third quarter. They\u00a0even led by as much as 29 at one point.<\/p>\n
Mills earned TCL Player of the Game honors as he paced Australia with a game-high 25 points, together with 8 rebounds, 2 assists, and 4 steals.<\/p>\n
Special was the night overall for the 35-year-old as he passed Ray Borner as the third all-time leading scorer for the Boomers in the World Cup. He’s now 11 away from tying Philip Smith at no. 2 (301).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Boomers prevailed over Finland in Okinawa\u2019s first World Cup game, prevailing 98-72<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":158,"featured_media":344975,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[383],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-344992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-cup"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/08\/image-19.jpg","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/158"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344992"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=344992"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=344992"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=344992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}