In a great piece of news for basketball followers in this country, Basketball Australia announced on Tuesday that the world's No.1-ranked team, Argentina, is coming to Australia for a three-match warm-up series against the Australia Boomers in a lead-up to the 2010 World Championships. The series will tour from Perth (June 25th) to Melbourne (June 27th) and finish in Adelaide (June 29th).

Finally, something to get excited about that doesn't involve Russell Crowe firing arrows through Sherwood Forrest, and something that was desperately needed to boost the morale of the basketball public after Andrew Bogut's horrendous injury earlier this month ruled the Australian big man out of the 2010 NBA Playoffs.

Providing Argentina play with their full complement of NBA experienced players, headlined by Manu Ginobli and Luis Scola (pictured, above, in No.4 singlet), this series should be sold-out each and every night. Even though, in all likelihood, Ginobli will heed the advice from the San Antonio Spurs and miss the tour and the World Championships to keep himself fresh and injury free in preparation for the 2010/11 NBA season.

But the announcement of this tour has put a lot of pressure on the marketing department at Basketball Australia, because anything less than maximum exposure across all media outlets in Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide will amount to a failure.

That's why I question the decision to play one of the games in Melbourne.

The game will be squashed in on the Sunday of the final week of the AFL's split round, with no competition from any AFL game in Melbourne on that day, so theoretically there is great potential to have fans flocking to see David Barlow and Joe Ingles suiting up again on Australian soil.

But does anyone in Melbourne care enough about an exhibition game that won't include Australia's most marketable player, Bogut, during the middle of winter when it just pops up and appears for one afternoon?

Melbourne likes to think of itself as the sporting capital of the world, but in Melbourne the world revolves around the AFL from March to September, and in the week leading up to the Australia-Argentina clash all eyes and ears will be focused on the Friday night showdown between Geelong and St.Kilda. Those two teams will be meeting for the first time since the 2009 Grand Final in front of an estimated crowd that should exceed 80,000, while the basketball will be lucky to get the 3,500 fans needed to put the ‘Sold-Out' sign up.

Has Basketball Australia set itself up to fail?

With the Sydney Kings re-born for the upcoming NBL season, wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity to play a game in the Harbour City and get a feel on how hot basketball is in Sydney, cross-promoting this game with Kings merchandise and membership packages?

Or how about playing the game in Wollongong and rewarding the fans of the Wollongong Hawks who enjoyed a memorable 2009/10 NBL season with a fairy-tale trip to the Grand Final series, with many of them forking out for a $500 share in the team just to keep the Hawks alive?

I can't remember the Melbourne Tigers having one sell-out game last season, and while fans stayed away in droves, Basketball Australia have selected Melbourne as one of the host venues for these Argentina fixtures.

From a personal point of view, it's great for me as a Melburnian; I have no doubt that I'll be there. But basketball is bigger than just me, and with an opportunity to play this game in either Sydney or Wollongong, I think Basketball Australia missed an enormous possibility to really crack the market in New South Wales.

As things stand, I fear they've set themselves up for an embarrassingly low audience in Melbourne.

(Daniel Eade is a freelance basketball writer who contributes to the Gaze Hoops site.)