what happens when an Aussie team takes on NBA giants

The first time an international club played an exhibition against an NBA team was in 1978, when European powerhouse Maccabi Tel Aviv beat the defending NBA champion Washington Bullets in Israel as part of the inaugural NBA Global Games.

When the late David Stern became the commissioner of the NBA in 1984, he set out to make basketball a global game in part by increasing the frequency of inter-league matches, bringing them to Asia, Africa, South America and, eventually, North America for the first time in 1987. Now, international clubs travel to North America every preseason to test themselves against NBA competition.

These games are meant to be entertaining for fans of international basketball, tune-ups for NBA teams, and tests for foreign players and clubs to see where they stack up against the world’s best. But they are also meant to be competitive. In fact, eight international teams have beaten NBA franchises, including Maccabi Tel Aviv defeating the Toronto Raptors at the Air Canada Center in 2005 to mark the first loss for an NBA team on North American soil, FC Barcelona beating Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers in 2010, and Real Madrid taking down the Dallas Mavericks earlier this month.

But short of a rare and historic win, why do international teams clamor to take part in the NBA Global Games? It’s obviously cool to play against NBA stars in front of tens of thousands of fans, but is it worth taking a break in the middle of their season, traveling across the world, risking injuries to key players and, more often than not, getting thoroughly outclassed by NBA teams? Because that’s exactly what happened to the Cairns Taipans of the Australian National Basketball League (NBL) this preseason. And for them, at least, it was worth every mishap.

“It’s kind of a dream come true,” 20-year-old NBA prospect Bobi Klintman tells the Guardian in between playing the Washington Wizards and Toronto Raptors. “You get to…