MELBOURNE (Paulo Kennedy's View from Downunder) - This week we heard Australia had been cleared of "tanking" during their FIBA Basketball World Cup match against Angola.

I must say, watching this game was quite a unique experience for a Boomers fan.

The reality is our national team has rarely been in a position where the last group game was not crucial to advancing to the next stage of the tournament.

Two examples I can think of are the final group match-ups at the 1996 and 2008 Olympics.

On those occasions the Aussies played their usual rotations and defeated Greece and Lithuania by 41 and 31 points respectively. I can only assume those two European powers had bad days.

Doing it differently
Come 2014, however, and this Boomers team took a different approach.

No matter whether they won by 40 or lost by 40 against Angola, their position in Group D would be decided by the result of the Lithuania-Slovenia game later that day.

They rested key players whose bodies had endured significant minutes through the tournament and gave bench men Brock Motum, Chris Goulding, Cam Bairstow, Dante Exum and Nate Jawai big minutes.

Jawai, Exum and Goulding had previously played a combined 70 minutes in the entire tournament, but on this day they logged 91.

The result, naturally, was a Boomers bench unit out on their feet at the end of the game.

Understandably though, having seen key players not on the court and a team not playing with intensity late in the contest, FIBA chose to investigate.

What was different?
Many basketball fans in Australia, well aware of the long-running practice of jostling for group positions at Olympics and World Cups, wondered why there hadn't been similar investigations of previous incidents, such as this one in 2012.

This statement from FIBA at the time appears to answer that question: "As FIBA has more recently introduced a Code of Conduct and Fair play as well as regulations to address the manipulation of results, corruption and match-fixing, FIBA now has the duty to formally open disciplinary proceedings if a conduct is deemed improper, such as losing a game intentionally."

The new Code of Conduct and FIBA's new agreement with the IOCFIBA's new agreement with the IOC appear to have brought this issue into greater focus, and I support this change.

At international tournaments, whispers sometimes emerge about a team or teams jockeying for favourable position in their group.

Whether those whispers are accurate or not, they are damaging and FIBA's efforts to eradicate this deserve every basketball fan's backing.

The proof?
The big issue is how you prove it.

The Australian players in the final quarter of that game did not perform at the level we are used to, no one can dispute that.

Whether that was because of fatigue or another more sinister reason, we may never know for sure.

Looking at the data, the Aussies shot 51 per cent from the field, 56 per cent from three-point range, 78 per cent from the free-throw line and built up a 15-point lead.

Did the team collude to rest their starters and intentionally lose a game by performing poorly, only to blow their opponents out in the first half? Or was a plan hatched at half-time?

Both scenarios seem unlikely, but I still think FIBA was right to investigate and I hope they do likewise at future events whenever there is any doubt.

The announcement
For mine, the only change would be in how the investigation is announced.

There is no doubt the announcement - which stated "it is widely suspected that Australia lost that game" and mentioning the "on-court behaviour displayed by Australia" had "generated huge disappointment by basketball fans and experts" - bordered on dismissing the presumption of innocence.

Just as importantly, from a PR perspective, it took the world basketball media's attention away from the actual game in the middle of the sport's showpiece.

If possible, in future incidents I think the investigation should be made after the tournament. If there was a need to announce it sooner, I would recommend a simple statement along these lines: "FIBA will investigate suggestions the Australian national team intentionally lost their Group D game against Angola. This investigation will conclude after the FIBA Basketball World Cup in Spain. No further statement will be made until the investigation is complete."

Realistically though, the best way to remove the suspicion is to have a better system of competition.

With 32 teams slated for the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup, eight groups of four will make jockeying for position a dangerous pastime.

You can then have two venues for the knockout rounds - like at Spain 2014 - but maintain a blind draw in those two halves. Fans and teams will still know their next location, just not their potential next opponent. Problem solved.

On last week…
A friend pulled me up on one element of last week's column, adamant I had been far too general in my comment of there being "little consistency" in the refereeing this NBL season compared to last.

He was right, because a number of games have been refereed very well, and there are only a couple of areas that I had in my mind when I typed that section.

Number one is the game often not being called the same way from the first minute to the last.

That was a major point of emphasis last season and it worked well. This year, often teams are upping the physicality after half-time and physically shutting opponents down. Not exciting.

The second is the defenders initiating contact on the cutter, screener or the person who is holding the ball, putting them on the back foot and slowing the offence.

As it is, in some games, offensive players have to fight through physicality to move around the court.

Get back on those two options and we will again see the free-flowing offensive games we had last season on a regular basis.

Paulo Kennedy

FIBA

FIBA's columnists write on a wide range of topics relating to basketball that are of interest to them. The opinions they express are their own and in no way reflect those of FIBA.

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