Boomers great Andrew Bogut has urged Basketball Australia to go "open slather" after departing coach Brian Goorjian defended his calls in the wake of their historic Paris Olympics defeat.
Goorjian confirmed he is stepping down after the Boomers failed in their Olympics medal hunt, exiting at the quarter-final stage in a heartbreaking 95-90 overtime defeat to a Nikola Jokic-inspired Serbia.
It was the biggest comeback in Olympic basketball history and accented a 1-4 campaign where the team was exposed by NBA stars in losses to Canada, Greece and Serbia.
Goorjian's non-selection of Matisse Thybulle had sparked widespread, continued outrage from fans while his limited use of five-time Games veteran Joe Ingles and NBA centre Duop Reath in Paris also raised eyebrows.
Basketball Australia was also forced to deny a rift among players that stemmed from those selections.
"You don't have to be Blind Freddy to see what's going on, what people are saying," Goorjian said.
"I'm proud of what I've done for the Boomers ... 16 years of my life.
"We got one (medal, bronze in Tokyo) and had to make a decision, do you want to start over, knowing you're going to take some punches?
"I thought it was courageous. We had a happy team, no bad blood."
He defended his non-use of Ingles, who played less than three minutes all tournament.
"The worst teams I've seen in this when you have three guys sitting on the bench, say three NBA players ... people say, 'Why don't you have this guy, he's a better player?.'
"Yeah, he's going to play seven minutes. How's that?
"He was tremendous and I needed him after the World Cup on the bench."
Goorjian led the Boomers to four Olympic tournaments in his two stints as head coach, from 2002-08 and 2020-24.
His Boomers exit is signals a changing of the guard, with veteran trio Patty Mills, Joe Ingles and Matthew Dellavedova all unlikely to be involved in the next World Cup and Olympic campaigns.
NBA star Josh Giddey is poised to take the reins as the Boomers' next on-court leader.
"Was pretty stern on giving the young guys an opportunity ... kept my mouth shut and coached," he said of his regeneration attempts.
"I just think we're going to be throwing punches for a long time."
Goorjian will now turn his eye to the NBL after signing a three-year deal to return to the Sydney Kings, who he led to three consecutive titles from 2003 to 2005.
Basketball Australia will consider whether to appoint a full-time replacement for Goorjian or potentially a fly-in, fly-out NBA coach who combines their day-to-day role with the national team job.
Former Boomers and NBA centre Bogut, who described their second half rotations against Serbia as a "train wreck" as the coach searched for a fix, warned against the part-time option.
"From a sustainability of a national team program, you want someone that probably knows the Australian system a little bit better and the way things run over here," Bogut said on NBL Media's The Gold Standard podcast.
"I would go open slather. Basketball Australia need to start from zero, start with a pool of maybe 10 to 15 (candidates), narrow that down to five and then have your hardcore interviews."
