The Australian men’s national basketball team will be without Ben Simmons at the Paris 2024 Olympics with the 28-year-old left out of the Boomers squad due to injury.

The Brooklyn Nets forward was looking forward to competing for his nation at Paris 2024 but his back injury, which emerged earlier in the year, has sidelined him for the rest of the basketball season.

Boomers head coach Brian Goorjian, a six-time National Basketball League (NBL) champion, revealed that Simmons was committed to the cause of the Boomers but was unfortunate to miss out from the 12-member Australian men’s basketball team for Paris 2024 led by Patty Mills.

Ben Simmons played a career-low of 15 games for National Basketball Association (NBA) side Brooklyn Nets last season. The former all-NBA forward is yet to play for the national team since the 2013 FIBA Oceania Championship.

Simmons passed up on the opportunity to play at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in order to “work on his game” after a chaotic season with the Philadelphia 76ers.

Ruled out for the remainder of the 2023-24 campaign, the 2018 NBA Rookie of the Year will address the ailing nerve impingement in his lower back. Simmons recently underwent a microscopic partial discectomy to alleviate the said complication.

Since moving to the Brooklyn Nets in the middle of the 2021-22 season, Simmons has featured in only 57 regular season games for the team. Back injuries have kept him on the sidelines quite frequently.

At the Paris 2024 Olympics men’s basketball tournament, the Boomers, fifth in the men’s FIBA rankings, are drawn in Pool A with Canada and the winners of the Olympic Qualifying Tournaments in Greece and Spain.

At the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the Boomers, led by Patty Mills, broke their 65-year medal drought by claiming the bronze medal.

Basketball matches at Paris 2024 will be held at two different venues. While the group stage games will be played at the Pierre Mauroy Stadium in Lille, the knockout rounds will be conducted at the Bercy Arena in Paris.