Luol Deng is confident Great Britain basketball can continue to build momentum in 2008 and stay on course for the 2012 Olympics.
If you were looking for a feel-good story in British sport last year, basketball was it.
When 2007 began, Great Britain faced what appeared to be a daunting task to earn the right to play when London hosts the Olympics in four years' time.
To prove the program was of a good enough standard, world governing body FIBA told Great Britain they must qualify for the 2009 EuroBasket, the biannual European championships, and the 2010 FIBA World Championship.
But in order to do that, Great Britain first had to gain promotion from Europe's Division B, just to earn a shot at making the field via Division A.
It looked a tough task for a sport with few resources and little tradition in the UK.
But, inspired by the Olympic dream, top players began to sign on, none bigger than Chicago Bulls star Deng - who was born in Sudan but raised in London after his family sought political asylum.
With the likes of former NBA players Robert Archibald and Pops Mensah-Bonsu also on board, Great Britain romped through Division B, ultimately sealing promotion in September when Deng led the British to a convincing 163-119 aggregate win over Switzerland in the play-offs.
It was an outstanding achievement for a team that had never reached such heights in the modern era.
But for Deng and company, it was only the beginning.
"It's still getting better," Deng told PA Sport.
"There's a lot of new players from Great Britain and we're trying to get ourselves on the map and show people we can play."
Given the way Great Britain finished their Division B campaign last season, many experts suggested they were already playing better basketball than some of the teams in Division A.
Certainly Deng did his bit. The 22-year-old averaged 24.5 points per game to lead all players in Division B, and finished 10th in the voting for the FIBA Europe player of the year, not bad considering he was the only Division B player to collect so much as a single vote.
Deng did not go home empty-handed though, as he was named the Great Britain Olympic athlete of the year for his efforts.
Now Deng will look to try and repeat those heroics when the Division A campaign later this year, having been drawn in Group D alongside Israel, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Czech Republic.
"It's a big challenge for us," Deng said.
"This is somewhere we haven't been before but we definitely feel like we belong so we don't want to go up and then come straight back down. We want to prove to a lot of people that we're here to stay."
In Deng, Great Britain has one of the most exciting young players in the NBA. Although he has battled injuries in this, his third season in the league, Deng is in Chicago's starting five when healthy and has shown an ability to take control of games.
Securing his commitment to play was a major coup for Great Britain coach Chris Finch, but he is not done there.
Although Deng has so far been unable to convince his London-born team-mate, Ben Gordon, to join the fray, Great Britain are pursuing the case of Kelenna Azubuike, the 24-year-old Golden State Warriors swingman who was born in London to Nigerian parents.
Azubuike was denied a passport in December but British Performance Basketball, which manages the national team, hopes to fight the decision.
Joel Freeland, a player drafted by Portland two years ago, has already been involved with the national team and is likely to get an increased role going forward, while Finch is also looking at Dan Clark and Nick George, who play in Spain with Estudiantes Madrid and Alicante respectively.
"We really believe that we've got a lot of young players coming up," said Deng.
"We definitely believe we have a team that is good enough to compete. We have the players coming through and the competition to make the team is only going to get better and that is good for Great Britain."
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