The nine Australians who made NBA opening-night rosters

Albeit well down on last season's contingent of 15 players, Australia is again well represented in the new NBA season, with the now-injured Ben Simmons joining eight players who featured in opening-night rosters last season.

Alex Toohey was not one of them, having been waived by the Golden State Warriors this week, whilst Dante Exum was not retained by the Dallas Mavericks. 

38-year-old Joe Ingles is another one to have dropped out, having moved to Melbourne United on a two-year NBL contract along with compatriot Luke Travers, and Lachlan Olbrich has moved to Alvark Tokyo after 37 games with the Bulls last season.

Matisse Thybulle and Duop Reath are no longer technically listed as Australians on NBA rosters despite both representing the Boomers at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Thybulle and Reath are now classified as American and South Sudanese respectively.

Irving and Simmons also feature in a record-breaking contingent of 19 internationals with All-Star honours.

Dyson Daniels - Atlanta Hawks

One of Atlanta's premier perimeter defenders continues to make strides in the NBA and his fifth season in the league could be especially exciting. 

Daniels has risen through the ranks to become one of the league's lead defenders, being honoured in the NBA's All-Defensive First Team in 2025 and second team in 2026.

He was second in the count for most steals of 2025/26 with 149, one behind Cason Wallace with one fewer appearance made, and was third in the league behind Wallace and Detroit's Ausar Thompson for deflections after topping both tallies in 2024/25. 

His defensive output barely dropped in 2025/26 despite taking on more of an offensive role in the absence of Trae Young, where he upped both his rebound and his assist count significantly.

The focus of Daniels' off-season has been his shooting accuracy from both within and beyond the arc, and an improvement in that would make him a great triple threat for the Hawks.

Jock Landale - Atlanta Hawks

Two Aussies in the same starting five?

We can't recall it happening since Ingles and Exum in 2014/15 (get in touch if we've missed one!), but there's a real very prospect this season of Jock Landale joining Boomers teammate Daniels as a Hawks starter at some point this season.

He has been forecasted to be second behind starting centre Onyeka Okongwu in the Hawks depth chart for this season, leaving him just one step away from making history. 

Landale is playing for his immediate future on an expiring contract worth US$14m, having been re-signed by the Hawks after averaging nine points and four rebounds across his 23 games in Atlanta after a deadline-day move. A finals debut for the team awaited only for an ankle injury to put paid to those plans.

His numbers at previous team Memphis (11 points and 6.5 rebounds) were even better.

By February, the Melburnian center could well find himself starting for a finals contender or attempting to settle into a sixth home. It'll be fascinating to see which way the coin falls.

Josh Giddey - Chicago Bulls

Coming off the back of a 17-point average last season, Giddey is about to tackle his sixth NBA season just days after turning 24, and despite having to go under the knife during the off-season with ankle surgery, he looks ready to peak. 

Giddey posted career-best average figures for points (17), assists (9.1) and rebounds (8.3) at the Bulls in 2025/26, helped in part by having been on the court for an average of 32 minutes. 

The 6'8" Aussie is one of the tallest lead ball handlers in the competition and will take charge of a youthful Bulls offense including number four draft pick Caleb Wilson, who has mega potential. 

The Bulls are under new management both on the court and in front of house, so it remains to be seen what kind of an impact he'll be able to have in the early phase of the transition, but pre-season performances against the Timberwolves and Grizzlies were both promising.

Kyrie Irving - Dallas Mavericks

Irving's 15th season in the NBA sees him continue at the home of his previous three, where he has played 150 of his 875 NBA career games.

It should have been his 16th, but his body had other ideas as the severe ACL injury suffered in March 2025 kept him out of action for the entire of the 2025/26 campaign. 

He has sent mixed messages about what he thinks the immediate future may hold, telling the press that he's "really excited" about the first dozen games of the season in which he gets to test his new (well, not so new) left knee, whilst also speaking about NBA has changed - for the worse, in his opinion - across his 15-year career.

"When I came in, we were not doing tipping and gambling meetings and social media, and mental health was this foreign subject," Irving explained.

"Nobody ever talked about it in 2011. The game has changed. It’s become less human, more robotic. My next few years, I kind of look at it like, do I really love that aspect of it? I love the playing. I love the competition.

“But do I love (everything else) that goes into it? ... I don’t see myself playing in the NBA at 42, 43."

The Mavs are expected to be close to propping up the bottom of the Western Conference with the likes of the Pelicans, Clippers and Kings, and given his 18-month layoff, Irving can be forgiven for just taking the start of the season 'one game at a time'. 

Johnny Furphy - Indiana Pacers

Furphy is now eight months into rehabilitation from a torn ACL suffered in February and is expected to be a midseason return, at which point he'll have turned 22. 

His recovery has "been extremely positive" and "hit all the benchmarks" as of late September, according to Pacers assistant general manager Ted Wu at the time. 

Despite facing a second straight interrupted season and a significant setback in his development, Furphy has both youth and contract time on his side: he's on the books until the end of 2027/28, and the Pacers hold their second round draft pick in high regard, so there should be plenty of opportunity to get some meaningful minutes ahead of what could be just a one-year absence from the finals.

Rocco Zikarsky - Minnesota Timberwolves

Zikarsky begins the second half of his two-season two-way deal, having made just five appearances for the NBA side last term.

The only meaningful of those five appearances was a 20-minute stint against the New Orleans Pelicans in the Wolves' final game of the regular season, when they rested starters such as Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle ahead of their opening finals series against the Nuggets. 

He posted eight points and nine rebounds on that occasion, backing up some impressive G-League numbers that included an average of 16 points, ten rebounds and three blocks per game and a field goal percentage of a shade over 53%.

Zikarsky was the first to admit that he struggled with drop coverage at the elite level, saying he was "blown by (and) too low a few times" during his 36 minutes as an NBA player, and that has been a key focus of his off-season. 

If he can make significant leaps in his coverage, the minutes could follow: he doesn't appear to have much competition other than fellow sophomore Joan Beringer to deputise for Rudy Gobert.

Ben Simmons - Sacramento Kings

Simmons was set to make an illustrious and high-profile comeback as a backup to rookie guard Darius Acuff Jr before his plans and ambitions for 2026/27 were devastatingly torn up by a season-ending Achilles injury in practice. 

The good news from a financial perspective is that Simmons technically made the Kings' opening night roster, activating a US$1m bonus to go on top of his one-year, US$3.5m contract. 

The fact he had sustained the injury in team practice offered him some protections in terms of his salary, but all reports suggest the Kings were never hesitant to keep the 30-year-old on the books with the potential for a new contract to be offered next season. 

Nonetheless, we won't be seeing him take to the court this time around.

Josh Green - Utah Jazz

The next cab off the rank in a lengthening line of Aussies to play for the Jazz is Sydney-born shooting guard Josh Green, who joins the Jazz as a 3&D wing after a complicated series of trades that saw move briefly to the Minnesota Timberwolves before again being moved on. 

Green makes the move after a frustrating second season in Charlotte where, having started 67 of his 68 games played in 2024/25, he returned from shoulder injury only to be used as part of a rotating group of deputies to starting rookie guard Kon Knueppel.

2026/27 is not expected to at all be any better for the 25-year-old, who is projected to be behind the likes of Ace Bailey, Brice Sensabaugh and Josh Okogie in a crowded group of small forwards. 

The fact that he played only 29 minutes across the Jazz's four official pre-season games does not bode well in terms of getting anything more than a sporadic role in the first half of the season, though anything will be possible now that he has made the opening-night roster. 

That could be especially true for the second half of the season, with Green on an expiring contract - meaning that any franchise looking for a reliable three-point shooter in early 2027 should have him at least back of mind. 

Tyrese Proctor - Cleveland Cavaliers

There'll be no shortage of competition for places on the Cavaliers roster and one source of depth comes from second-season player Tyrese Proctor, who will be expecting much more than the ten minutes per game he averaged in his rookie season. 

He evolved into more of a point guard than a shooting guard throughout 2025/26, opening the door for him to potentially transition into a backup for 37-year-old James Harden as Harden's minutes decline. 

With Dennis Schroder and Lonzo Ball no longer in the picture, Proctor has declared his ambitions to be "a leader of the guard group" and assert himself as the natural successor to Harden.

He knows there'll be a lot of competition within the squad - "a lot of dogs" as he described it - and Proctor spent the summer bulking up to add to his athletic profile.  

One of Proctor's greatest strengths last season was a three-point shooting percentage of 35%, well in line with the league average, and a combined 37-point haul in late season games against Atlanta and Washington gave a potential insight into what could be coming. 

Aaron Murphy has been with Flashscore since 2018 and, as the founding editor of the Australian newsdesk, has reported on-site at several major events in Melbourne including the Australian Open, State of Origin, A-League, NBL and international cricket. You can read his pieces here and contact him on X or LinkedIn.