Having never represented Australia previously, Thybulle proved to be a vital cog in the Boomers team that won the country's inaugural men's basketball medal<\/a>, often guarding the opposition team's best player, as he faced the likes of Kevin Durant and Slovenia's Luka Doncic.<\/p>\n After making history in his maiden Olympic campaign, Thybulle thanked his teammates for allowing him to join the team and explained his decision to represent Australia<\/a>.<\/p>\n "Patty [Mills], Joe [Ingles], [Aron] Baynes and Delly [Matthew Dellavedova], for them to trust me enough to bring me into this, this far along, after everything they've done to build a foundation, to create a culture and to fight for the opportunity to be in this position, I'm honoured to have been considered and welcomed into this family to be a part of it," he said.<\/p>\n "There's no better country I could have represented in the Olympics. Having the dual citizenship, it was always funny because people were always like, 'Well wouldn't you rather be with Team USA?', and for me it was never even a thought.<\/p>\n "You couldn't even put Australia and the US in the same conversation, I always wanted to be a part of this."<\/p>\n Part of the reason Thybulle was drawn to Australia as opposed to Team USA, who could have used a defensive specialist like him, was due the spirit of Australian people, he said.<\/p>\n "I was young when we lived there, my sister was born there, but there's something special about the culture there," he said.<\/p>\n "I think it says a lot about the people just to see how excited we are about finally making it and doing this for our country.<\/p>\n "It's special being a part of something that people care [about], and I feel like in other places things kind of just happen and people shrug their shoulders like, 'Oh, good for you', but in Australia we take pride in every little victory.<\/p>\n "Even the athletes that didn't win and the progress that they've made, the progress the country has made in athletics, it's been huge to be a part of just the pride of being Australian."<\/p>\n With Thybulle in the line-up, Australia went .500 against Team USA, shocking them in a pre-Olympics exhibition game in Las Vegas, before the Americans got their revenge in the Olympic semi-final.<\/p>\n While Australia's win shocked many back home, Thybulle said the players themselves were not surprised in the least.<\/p>\n "People were really surprised when we beat them in an exhibition game, but that was everyone outside the locker room," he said. "In the locker room we went into those games [expecting to win]."<\/p>\n "You look back to the days of Andrew Gaze, those guys are going and playing the Dream team and they still expected to win, and I think that's something that Australia has really special, just the pride and the confidence that we aren't scared of any competition, any opponent, and we go in expecting to win.<\/p>\n "So yeah, when we played them we fully expected to win and a good chunk of the game I thought we would."<\/p>\n For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" American-born Boomers star Matisse Thybulle says the prospect of representing the United States over Australia was "never even a thought" after winning a bronze medal. […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113651"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113653,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113651\/revisions\/113653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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