Why Trans-Tasman series is invaluable for future Boomers

I remember the Trans-Tasman series against New Zealand was my first welcome to the Boomers.

It was a four-game series before the 2004 Athens Olympics, and that was a legit Tall Blacks squad back in the day with Pero Cameron, Kirk Penney and those guys.

It was a rugby game, it was wild. There were punch-ons and wrestling and all kinds of stuff going on in those games, it was a bit of a rivalry to say the least!

It was funny because both teams got along off the court. After the games, we had drinks together at the post-game functions, it was interesting to observe as a pimple-faced 19-year-old.

As far as this Trans-Tasman Throwdown goes, it's kind of a dead period now in Australian basketball.

When you go NBL offseason, NBA is heating up. There's not much going on in Australia basketball-wise on a fully professional level.

So, I think it's good to have these kinds of series. I think the timing of it's probably what needs to be looked at a little bit more just because a lot of guys can't put their hand up yet as they're coming out of their seasons and some guys are overseas. For example, players such as Chris Goulding and Nick Kay.

One positive of the series is fringe Boomer squad players could get a look into the main squad pending their performance. Nick Kay is a prime example of a guy that played in these windows and made a Boomer spot multiple times now in major tournaments.

There's a few other guys that have come through this system that have solidified spots. I think it's valuable. There's probably two or three spots up for grabs on the fringe, young college guys or NBL guys and these are the windows where they can prove their worth.

Dean Vickerman is going to be involved with the program and you can see how guys are on a day-to-day, you can see how they are in a locker room, you can see how they are when they're travelling.

Are they good to have around the group? Can they play a role? Maybe they didn't play as many minutes, knowing that when the big dogs come from the U.S. and Dyson and Josh and all those guys, can they play a role and be good in the locker room? Or are they going to be pouty? Those kinds of things do come up on even short national team commitments such as the one just passed.

It's just that grind of camps and picking up on tendencies to guys and making sure that that piece of the puzzle can fit in well. The last thing you want to do is have a guy that's playing well in all these windows and then thinks that that, then transitions into playing as much as say a Josh Giddey.

That's why I think these windows are valuable.