Basketball On The Internet.

TODAY is the day. August 7. A year ago today, not just basketball but sporting fans all across Australia sat spellbound and glued to their TV sets as Patty Mills led our national men's team - those Boomers of the Dreamtime - to medal glory at the Tokyo OIympic Games. 

A sensational 107-93 victory over Slovenia in the Bronze Medal playoff secured Australia its historic first-ever men's basketball medal of any hue at an Olympic Games or FIBA World Cup.

The journey that began with a team of committed part-timers in Tokyo in 1964, went full circle to that same city were Patty led his team of full-timers to the podium, with the promise of further future stops at the same destination.

Patty was magnificent. His 42-point personal haul was the highest score in a playoff game (for gold or bronze) in Olympic history as he and longtime on-court partner Joe Ingles completed a mission they began together in Beijing with coach Brian Goorjian.

It was a win no-one who saw it will ever forget, or the emotional scenes in its aftermath, best captured in this photograph by Aris Messinis of AFP/Getty Images.

It said it all. A picture worth 100,000 words.

“Our paths have been different throughout our careers, but the continuous constant factor and consistent thing was the national team. Every summer for 12 years we’ve come back to this thing, to build it and build it and build it. And obviously in Beijing, we were, I was 20, Patty was 19 turning 20. And we’ve continued to build this,” Ingles told the Sydney Morning Herald at the time.

What a night it turned into, Andrew Gaze - the man synonymous with basketball and Olympics in Australia - in his hosting capacity, breaking down in an emotional summary of the amazing journey we all had just seen completed.

These were the men and yes, this was the moment Australia claimed its "Rose Gold" Medal, finally stamping our flag in the ground.

COVID shifting the Games by a year and costing Australia Andrew Bogut; Aron Baynes suffering an unprecedented and horrific life-altering injury; the challenges were enormous for this group of young men.

But they answered the call, putting an end to the "curse" of Bronze Medal playoffs and disheartening disappointments along the way.

While some will say it was the culmination of a 65-year journey since 1956, that could be disputed.

Yes, Australia first competed at the Melbourne Olympics in 1956, but it was gifted a berth there as the host nation. The team failed to qualify for the 1960 Rome Olympics, technically making the 1964 team our first to compete on its own merit through qualifying.

Tokyo to Tokyo. It has a nice ring to it. So these were the guys who started it in Tokyo:

Now we have a batch of new heroes who took Australian basketball to a new frontier.

A year ago today. Happy birthday, happy one-year anniversary, happy memories for us all to relive and enjoy. They did it. And you know what? The journey isn't over yet.