Basketball On The Internet.

PERFECT. Saturday at 8am AEST, 7.30am in SA/NT, 6am in WA is when the Boomers will tip off against Serbia in the most important game in Australian men’s basketball’s Olympic history.

Win this and the Boomers already have banked a historic first-ever medal before even hitting the court against the USA or Spain in the gold medal playoff.

This is the point at which our Boomers teams of the past have faltered, beaten at Olympics in 1988, 1996 and 2000 to be left playing for the consolation bronze medal.

In reality, all three of those teams were laden with true blue Aussie talent – even if many of today’s pundits were in nappies or not even born when they were taking on the world’s finest - but lacked the X-Factor of self-belief which burns so resolutely in Andrej Lemanis’ 2016 team.

The core of this team bonded long ago and gathering together in San Diego during the NBA AllStar break, or regularly and randomly sending each other texts reminding of their mission in Rio, has made this campaign so unique.

This team is unique and there’s the key word – TEAM. They have one goal and one goal only. Sure, a silver would be a nice consolation but gold has been the objective since not one, or two, but virtually every players started talking up that target.

As Andrew Bogut said, why aim for less? That wouldn’t make any sense.

It’s just as hard to make sense of how beautifully this team has played basketball. If you want to introduce someone new to the game, show them the quarter final performance against Lithuania.

In what, to this point, was the biggest game of the Olympic tournament – the knock-out stage where so often Australia has bowed out – these Boomers not only won but did it by their biggest margin (26) and in the most convincing and emphatic manner imaginable.

Or show them the match against USA. Or France.

SO CLOSE: Rio assistant Luc Longley was so close to bronze in Sydney with the 2000 Boomers.

This is our Team of Destiny, if not our very own “Dream Team” given they are following their dream (and ours) and relaunched it with a Dreamtime revisit engineered by Patty Mills, spending pre-Olympic time at Uluru.

They have been solid as rocks since, winning by an average margin of 22.4 points per game.

(OK. That’s still well shy of the winning margin of the USA’s Dream Team of Barcelona in 1992, but let’s have context. We don’t have 300 million people from which to select our basketball team.)

Installed as $1.53 favourites to defeat Serbia in the semi-final, the Serbs are $2.37 outsiders with online bookmaker sportsbet.com.au after escaping hated rival Croatia 86-83 today in their quarter-final.

“As soon as we opened the Boomers v Serbia market, punters only wanted to back the Aussies and they deserve their favouritism. We’ll all be cheering for Spain to knock off USA in the other semi,” sportsbet.com.au’s Christian Jantzen said.

(Spain is at $9.50 to beat the USA in the earlier semi final and that wouldn’t be the worst bet you could take a punt on. The USA would pay a whopping $1.04).

Our team is unique and on the same page. It was 16 years ago in Sydney Australia last achieved this stage and it petered dramatically.

But this team is unlikely to because of that feeling of destiny.

How else do you explain Bogut making it back from his left knee injury when even Lemanis was expecting to activate Aleks Maric?

How else do you explain Matthew Dellavedova playing on an injured hip, and doing it this well?

“He has a bit of a corky to his hip and as I understand it there is nothing structural in there and the medical staff will get onto it,” Lemanis said.

“This has been a goal of ours for years, for this group.

“I don’t think a couple of little aches and pains are going to stop these guys trying to achieve what they want to get done.”

No. But Serbia was, without doubt, the Boomers’ toughest win along this remarkable and unprecedented road.

The win was by 15 but it was an 84-80 lead before Joe Ingles splashed his three, 106 seconds from the siren to ignite an 11-0 floodgates-open finish.

It’s still kind of a shame Croatia didn’t make it to the semi final round because, like Lithuania, they’re another team with which the Boomers have history.

It would have been satisfying to lower their colours as Australia lowered Lithuania’s en route to the Final Four.

Australia is 1-1 with Serbia in international play, losing 79-94 at the 2010 FIBA World Championship and winning 95-80 in Rio last week.

One step from a sure medal, don’t now expect a misstep.