Last week, promotional photos of the Australian Olympic team featuring nearly 100 percent white athletes were released, sparking backlash from Opals star Cambage - herself a member of the team.
“If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a million times, HOW AM I MEANT TO REPRESENT A COUNTRY THAT DOESN’T EVEN REPRESENT ME,” Cambage said via Instagram.
“Australia, wake the f*** up. I’m not playing these games no more, I’m not.
“It’s sad, the whitewashing is sad. Your black athletes lead you everywhere. Indigenous athletes are some of the best athletes we have. And y’all don’t use them at all.”
She originally suggested she may not participate in the Tokyo Games in protest but has since backtracked on that, much to the relief of Basketball Australia and the Australian Olympic Committee.
The AOC issued a statement accepting the point made by Cambage and admitting they "should have better reflected the rich diversity of athletes who represent Australia".
Ex-Boomers star Bogut, however, opposed Cambage's view on The Basketball Podcast.
"What frustrates me with this is counting the amount of different skin colours in a photo is just poor form," he said.
“It’s a pretty slippery slope once you start counting.
"Some of our most prominent people of colour, that play for Australia, Patty Mills and Ben Simmons, they're playing in the best league in the world right now — they can't even come to that photo shoot. I don't think Cambage can, she's probably overseas.
"There's a lot of different factors that go into it. This is made out like it was a blatant effort to whitewash the photo, to make Australia look white.
"Come on. Not in today's day and age, you'd be an idiot if you're running the AOC to do that, because you're going to get blow-ups.
"Playing devil's advocate, are we now going to have team photos based on population (percentages)?
"It's just absolutely ridiculous.
"How do you structure this in the future? So the AOC says, 'OK Liz, we take what you say, you're right, how do we fix this? What's the formula? Percentage of population in Australia? Percentage of athletes that are representing Australia at the Olympics?'
"There's going to be more analytics in that than f***ing the NBA analytics."
Cambage responded to Bogut's comments via Twitter, saying:
Bogut shot back with:
Cambage, who has a Nigerian father, received other forms of criticism for her threat to withdraw from this year's Olympics, but backed herself all the way via her Instagram story.
"There are two people in this world. There are the people who have the balls to stand up and say something and make change — that’s me. I was born for this.
“I am such a narcissist, I am such a psycho b**** that all the hate that you give me, I love it … it makes me go harder, it makes me push for more.
“The second type of people in this world — that’s the people that are intimated and scared and insecure and hide behind fake profiles and talk s**t because you’re too scared to do anything.
“I’m out here talking my s*** with my big-a*** mouth, being a big-old b****, making change, baby.
“Thankyou for all the messages of love and thankyou for all the messages of hate because the hate turns me on and the love lifts me up.
“I’m not going to stop for no one or nothing. Have a great day.”
