It was the Rio Olympics and the Boomers had the jump on a star-studded Team USA. The Americans needed a bucket and Durant thought he had it when he posted up a skinny Aussie from the bench barely pushing six foot one.

He went up with the ball, but came down without it after Damian Matin picked his pocket and made it look easy. It's something NBL fans had seen a thousand times, just never on a guy who was arguably the best player on the planet.

It showed all the nous that's made him arguably the best defensive player in NBL history and, in all honesty, he didn't think a whole lot of it.

"I made sure I didn't wear KD's because I didn't want to wear the shoes of a guy I might up guarding at some stage," Martin recalls.

"Watching the USA team in the warm-up throwing down dunks and shooting from everywhere, it was the sheer size that stood out. KD's seven-foot tall and has at least a seven-foot-four wingspan.

"At the same time, we're there to win a game and as soon as the game tipped off it genuinely became a game we were out there to win.

"I got subbed in and I was guarding KD. When he took me down to the block I thought 'OK, this guys's seven-foot, I'm six-one, it'd be silly for him not to turn around and shoot over me'.

"It was just a matter of trying to pick which way he was going to spin. Lucky for me he turned into me and I managed to get the ball."

It's the type of play that's been par for the course throughout his career, so it was only when wife Brittany called in the aftermath that Martin found out the moment was slightly bigger than he'd thought.

"I can honestly say, in the moment, I wasn't thinking 'how cool was that' or anything," he said.

"I was just furious we'd lost to America, we really did think we'd let an opportunity go by. Then I checked my phone and my wife was back home in Australia 38 weeks pregnant.

"I had all these missed calls from her and I thought she'd gone into labour. I called expecting her to be in the hospital and she said 'look, I'm so sorry, when you stole the ball off Kevin Durant I tweeted at him haha my husband stole the ball off you'.

"I couldn't help but laugh because, one, here she was 38 weeks pregnant and getting caught up in that moment, two, she's never on Twitter and, three, it was some of the worst trash talk I've ever heard. I don't think KD lost any sleep over it."

Even in a career that's seen Martin rack up rings and DPOY's with a regularity that was almost boring, that moment comes up more than any other. He's certainly not salty about that.

"If it's me, we're talking hours," he jokes when asked how much time goes by without that steal coming up in conversation.

"One of the first questions I get asked at any event, it's never about the Wildcats, it's always about that steal on KD.

"It literally brings a smile from ear to ear and it's like I'm in that moment again so I've got no problem being asked about it."

Good thing too, given he spoke to The Mercury on the way into a breakfast function where it was sure to come up again. As far as Australia-USA showdowns go, it's a single moment that sits just a rung or two below Shane Heal going nose to chest with Hall-of-Famer Charles Barkley in Atlanta.

It's also the perfect metaphor for the task the current Boomers face, with Brian Goorjian looking to oversee a massive upset of the giants in Thursday's semi-final.

Read more: Goorjian poised to end Boomers medal drought

Durant will be there again, and in ominous form having dropped 29 points in his team's quarter-final win over Spain.

The Aussies have hit their own purple patch after obliterating Argentina by 38 points on Tuesday night, but they'll start long outsiders in the quest for a breakthrough Olympic medal.

Martin is confident they can pull it off having witnessed the seeds being sown in the aftermath to that game against USA five years ago in which the Boomers were up at halftime only to fade out.

"In the locker room afterwards Bogues (Andrew Bogut) just said 'anyone who thinks near enough is good enough, get out of the locker room now'," Martin said.

"That's the mentality we had led by guys like Bogut, Patty Mills, [Aron] Baynesy, Joe [Ingles], Dellevadova. When you go away on camps for days and weeks at a time with these NBA players with that message, that it's gold or bust, you start believing it.

"It didn't matter if someone had just won and NBA championship or was on millions of dollars a year, they were there for one reason.

"Now, even though Bogut's stepped aside, they've still got Patty, Baynes, Joe, Delly. On paper the USA are a team of superstars but can they put the egos aside and play as a team the way the Boomers have in the last couple of campaigns?

"The boys are playing with confidence they've earned. They have that belief and every single player is out there doing what they believe they're capable of, winning a gold medal."