David's Story
David Andersen is one of Australia’s most experienced Olympic basketballers having competed at the Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, London 2012 and Rio 2016 Games. Andersen started his basketball career at the AIS and after just one season in Australia’s NBL, moved to play internationally. He has enjoyed much success playing around Europe with stints in Spain, Russia, Italy, Turkey, France as well as playing 103 games for the Houston Rockets in the NBA.
Having finished ninth, seventh and seventh at his first three Games, Andersen returned to Olympic competition at the Rio 2016 Games where the Australian side had a strong chance to push for an historic first Olympic men’s basketball medal. The team began the competition with wins over medal contenders France and Serbia. A close loss to the USA was backed up by strong wins over China and Venezuela to see the side finish their group in second. They eased past Lithuania in the quarter-finals before going down to Serbia 87-61 in the semi-finals. The result set up a bronze medal clash with Spain which went down to the wire. Australia again missed a medal by the barest of margins as the Spanish scored two free throws with just over 5 seconds remaining to take the final position on the Rio podium.
Andersen scored 8.8 points and grabbed 4.8 rebounds in just under 20 minutes a game in Rio.
