Basketball: Luc Longley puts blame for brawl squarely at feet of Philippine coach Chot Reyes

The Philippines' Jason William, centre, jumps to hit Australia's Daniel Kickert centre left as others rush to break the brawl during the FIBA World Cup Qualifiers. Photo / AP Photo

If it wasn't for Luc Longley stepping in, who knows just how bad the damage could have been for several players.

The hulking former NBA star came to the rescue of Chris Goulding who was trapped underneath several players and officials.

Longley, who is the Boomers assistant coach, spoke as the team arrived back in Australia and he didn't bite his tongue, slamming the Philippines coach for inciting the violence.

"I've never seen anything like that, not even on YouTube," Longley said.

"I believe their coach incited them to come out and 'thug' us.

"I think there's video evidence of that. I'm most disturbed with their head coach.

"I think he was embarrassed by the kind of shape they were in, I think he was embarrassed with how they fought."

Luc Longley says trying to get to @ChrisGoulding43 was a “horrifying” moment. #FIBAWC @channeltennews pic.twitter.com/c4tIF1HO6E

— Veronica Eggleton (@veggleton) July 3, 2018

Longley said Reyes did not look him in the eye after the game even though they did shake hands.

"He wouldn't look me in the eye at the end of the game when I shook his hand. I think he was embarrassed and I think that's where a lot of it came from there.

"I'm upset with him more than anybody.

"Letting his team take gangster selfies on the baseline shows how much he lost control."

Longley has been praised for coming to the rescue of Goulding and he admitted it was a "horrifying" moment and his intentions were to "just get my big body in the way".

"Those are sorts of images that you hope you never see, one guy lying on the ground covering up his head and being kicked and beaten by the other team's players and officials and guys from the crowd – it was horrifying," he said.

"I wasn't supposed to come off the bench…sometimes you decide there's a more important thing going on. Really disturbing.

"I went onto the court to protect our guys with the idea of obviously not hurting everyone, just getting my big body in the way. I went to help a couple of other guys and then saw a big throng of blue, I couldn't even see any yellow at the bottom of it.

"Eventually I did see that (yellow uniform) and that's when we realised that Bubbles (Goulding) had been left by himself which is not fair.

"He took a lot of hard hits and didn't swing once in retaliation which was an enormous act of discipline."

Australian coach addresses chaotic situation

Current Australian and Brisbane Bullets coach Andrej Lemanis said the playing group won't soon move on from the incident.

He stated the emotional scars from the horrific incident will stay with them over time and said the group held genuine fears of how they'd get out of the arena.

"Physically they have some bumps and bruises that will heal but the emotional scars we'll see over time," Lemanis said.

"What was disturbing was how quickly it became evident the situation could get out of control.

"The players, at the end of the day, feared for how we were going to get out of there and it shook everyone up."