BATON ROUGE – After a successful first-season in the National Basketball Association, former LSU basketball player Duop Reath will be looking for a second straight medal performance with the Team Australia men’s basketball team in a few weeks at the Summer Olympic Games in Paris.
Men’s Basketball pool play begins on July 27.
Reath is the fourth Australian to play for the Boomers, who spent time on the LSU Basketball team. He joins Eddie Palubinskas, who played at LSU from 1972-74, who played in the 1972 Munich and 1976 Montreal Olympics. Palubinskas was the second leading scorer in the 1972 games and top overall scorer in 1976, including scoring 48 against Mexico.
Other Olympians connected to Australia and LSU include Andy Campbell who played at LSU (1977-81) and in the 1976 and 1984 Olympic Games (Los Angeles); and, Ray Borner (1981-82) who played in four Olympic Games in 1984, 1988 (Seoul), 1992 (Barcelona) and 1996 (Atlanta).
Reath played at LSU for two seasons (2016-18) after two years at Lee College in Baytown, Texas. As a junior, the 6-9 Reath averaged 12 points, 6.2 rebounds and 1.5 blocks. Then in the 2017-18 senior season, Reath averaged 12.5 points and 5.3 rebounds in 24.2 minutes per game.
Over two seasons, he started 58 of 64 career games played with 40 games scoring in double figures and 10 double doubles including 24 points-11 rebounds versus Kentucky, 31-13 at Vanderbilt and 26-11 in the NIT win over UL-Lafayette. He also scored 30 points against UNCW.
He posted the second-best field goal percentage in the Southeastern Conference at 54.4 percent (167-of-307) in 2018.
The 28-year-old was born in South Sudan and his family moved to Australia at the age of nine.
Reath has played in several countries in his career with success before getting to the NBA including 2018-2020 in the Serbian League with first FMP and later Crvena zvezda. He then returned to Australia to play in the National Basketball League with the Illawarra Hawks.
One of his best seasons came in the 2022-23 season with the Qingdao Eagles of the Chinese Basketball Association where he averaged 18.2 points, 7.8 rebounds and 2.0 blocks. He also played in 2023 for Al Riyadi Beirut in the pro league in Lebanon.
Reath played for Portland in the 2023 NBA Summer League, his third time since leaving LSU that he was on a summer league squad. He eventually signed a two-way contract with Portland and in his first game on Nov. 12, 2023 had 11 points with three treys against the Lakers. On March 4, 2024, he had his career high of 26 points, hitting 10-of-14 field goals and 5-of-6 from three-point range.
On Feb. 16, 2024, Reath signed a standard three-year contract with the Portland NBA squad. He played 68 games and averaged 9.1 points and 3.7 rebounds in 17.9 minutes a game.
The Australian team is a veteran group with Patty Mills and Joe Ingles playing at their fifth Olympic Games. In all eight members of the 2020 (played in 2021 because of the pandemic) Bronze Medal team will return. Along with Mills and Ingles, Matthew Dellavedova will be at his fourth, Dante Exum, Josh Green, Nick Kay, Jock Landale and Reath return for their second.
Brian Goorjian is the head coach with LSU Associate Head Coach David Patrick back for his second Olympics as assistant coach for the Boomers. The rest of the staff is Adam Caporn and Matt Nielsen.
Australian defeated Slovenia, 107-93, in the Bronze Medal Game in the Tokyo Olympics.
Reath also was on Australia’s 2023 FIBA World Cup team.
There will be 12 teams in the Paris Olympic basketball competition and coverage will be featured on the networks of NBC Universal and streaming on Peacock for American audiences.