Milwaukee Bucks starting center Andrew Bogut will not suit up for the Australian Boomers national team in the coming FIBA-Oceania Olympic qualifiers. Australia will meet rivals New Zealand in a best-of-three series to determine the continent’s representative to the 2012 London Olympics basketball championship. Game one is set on September 7 in Melbourne, game two on September 9 in Brisbane and if necessary, game three will be played on September 11 in Sydney. Insurance issues had forced Bogut not to play for the Boomers but instead will assist Australia head coach Brett Brown on the bench. Bogut was the number one pick over-all in the 2005 NBA rookie draft and has so far had played 396 total games with the Bucks with norms of 12.7 points, 9.4 rebounds and 2.3 assists per outing. However, the Boomers will have an NBA player in Portland Trail Blazers guard Patrick Mills, who announced his availability for the qualifying competition. The 6-0 Mills, who was the 55th pick over-all by the Blazers in the 2009 draft, is a two-year NBA veteran with career averages of 5.1 ppg and 1.5 apg in 74 total games so far. Mills says with his current free-agent status, he is definitely seeing action for Australia in the coming New Zeland series, according to FIBA website.
“Being a free agent I haven't actually signed with a team for next season, but I will definitely play for the Boomers in September. We would rather also have Andrew Bogut and David Andersen on the team, but the way things go they have not been able to join us. The New Zealand series is always a tough one. Lucky for us the games are all in Australia - but you never know.”
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