KEY POINTS:
Tall Blacks small forward Dillon Boucher speaks for all his team-mates when he says tomorrow night's opener against Australia is about unfinished business.
The two sides meet in Melbourne, where the Tall Blacks have unhappy memories of being mown down in the final minute by the Boomers while on course for a Commonwealth Games gold medal. They went some way to rectifying that with a win in the Vodafone Arena last July but a win tomorrow would be sweeter still.
The stakes are high. The three-game series is a winner-take-all showdown for the region's sole automatic spot at next year's Beijing Olympics. The losers will have to overcome many of the world's best teams in a repechage tournament weeks before the Games.
"There's a bit of unfinished business here in Melbourne," Boucher said.
These are the games Boucher, basketball's Mr Intangibles, lives for. He loves playing Australia, knows what to expect from them and reckons they probably don't enjoy the clashes quite as much as New Zealand.
"There's a bit of pressure of them not to be beaten by the little brother from across the Tasman," he said.
The Tall Blacks have toured all over creation in preparation for this series, losing three from five at the Boris Stankovic Cup in China, all three matches in Latvia (against Belarus, Latvia and Lithuania) and two from three in Croatia, including a shock loss to Finland.
"The results were disappointing but we've played teams with a lot of different styles and it's been an opportunity to work some new guys into the system."
Boucher's input was also below par due to an ankle injury picked up in Nenad Vucinic's first game in charge against Venezuela. Boucher concedes he is not yet 100 per cent "but come Monday, I'm hoping I will be fine".
They will need him to be. His abrasive style gets under the skin of the Boomers, allowing the likes of Pero Cameron and Mark Dickel more time and space.
Dickel, who joined the Tall Blacks for the European leg of their tour, knows the importance of a winning start in a three-match series. "It would mean a lot to New Zealand basketball for us to qualify for another Olympics and, once there, we've proved we can beat the best. We've just got to get there first."
Last time the teams met, in July 2006, New Zealand achieved their first victory on Australian soil to capture the Al Ramsay Shield for just the second time. Dickel missed that encounter with a knee injury, just the start of a run of bad judgement and bad luck that saw him suspended through much of the world champs for marijuana use, then seriously injure his back during the Northern Hemisphere season.
"This series means a lot to me, especially the way things went for me last year."
Olympic qualification would also be a welcome fillip for basketball officials. Chief executive Bryn McGoldrick jumped ship last week and cut-backs at the national body have left many bitter.
That won't worry the Tall Blacks one jot but a fit and firing Boomer side will.
