MEXICO CITY — The next big moment in Canadian basketball is coming. You can count down to it if you want, but won’t have to wait 12 days for your basketball Christmas.

How about three sleeps?

First the Canadian men’s national team faces Panama to open the pivotal second round at the 2015 FIBA Tournament of the Americas and then it has Uruguay. If Canada has any plans to get to the Olympics it should be formalities, deal with them and move on.

The true occasion will be Canada’s test against Mexico on Tuesday night as part of what will undoubtedly be a wild scene in Palacio de los Deportes. The roughly 15,000 seat arena features a 10-foot high chain link fence around the upper bowl. The fence hasn’t been tested yet, but you have to think it’s there for a reason.

Support for the home team has been vocal — deafening by North American standards — and the expectation locally is that with Canada’s roster of NBA talent in the building, it will even more so.

That could just be the start of things. Remember Canada’s loss against Argentina way back when — okay, on Monday — in Canada’s first game of the tournament? It seemed hard to imagine then that it could have repercussions for Canada’s chances to qualify for Rio ten days later.

But here’s how the scenario shakes out: even if Canada can win against Mexico in their own arena (and regroup quickly to handle the Dominican Republic the following afternoon) and go 4-0 in the second round, there’s a good chance it would still end up as the second seed heading into the semi-finals.

Why? Even if Argentina goes 3-1 in the second round it would finish ahead of Canada because it would hold the tie-breaker due to its win back on Monday. It’s hard to imagine Argentina losing two games.

Clearly there are all kinds of permutations and Canadian head coach Jay Triano is probably right not to waste time trying figure them out. See game, win game, is the best approach.

But it all underlines that Canada is inching towards a climax that will be a new experience for this team, which doesn’t have a single player that has faced a must-win game in international basketball.

“Every game means something now, because there could be tie-breakers involved. Everybody’s in the mix,” said Triano, who used his team’s first practice in a week — and the only one it’ll have for nearly another week — to work on some after-timeout plays.

“One loss can throw you into a scramble where you’re now tied with three teams and the point spreads come in. That’s one of the things we think was good about coming out of the round [the way] we did, with two 20-point victories. If we get into a tie-breaker situation, we’re in a good spot. We’ve played the international game well that way.”

But things are really just getting started. Almost certainly Canada’s path to Rio will have to go through either Argentina or Mexico in the semi-final.

There is plenty of reason for optimism.

Canada goes into the second round as the tournament’s highest scoring team and best rebounding team by a considerable margin. It has also had the benefit of being able to spread its minutes around. Andrew Wiggins leads the team with 104 minutes played and 10 players are averaging at least 10 minutes a game.

By contrast, Gustavo Ayon, who has been perhaps the player of the tournament to this point in leading Mexico to a 4-0 record, has played 139 of a possible 160 minutes.

“Not by design, our minutes have been very [well] managed,” said Triano. “I think that’s because of the talent we have in our country. I can afford to put anybody out there. They’ve all played significant minutes in significant games. I hope that bodes well for us, as some teams have maybe had to over-play some of their better players to get into this position.”

Triano has had a team at 3-1 at this stage before — in the 2013 Tournament of Americas, in fact. That team seemed well-positioned then to earn one of the four available spots in the 2014 World Championship, but Canada lost its last three games and finished sixth.

“It’s not the same at all,” said Triano. “… Same record, I mean, [but] different guys, different team. Mature players. We’re not focused on anything other than Panama right now. We don’t care. There’s no day but today. Today’s the day that matters. It was cleanup today. Tomorrow will be strictly Panama. We’re not looking behind us. We’re not looking in front of us. We’ve got to be good every single day. When you’re not, then you’ve got to ask other teams to do favours for you. We don’t want to get into that.”

And hopefully Canada won’t need to. But even if everything breaks its way there will be must-win games against nemeses Argentina and Mexico and their rabid home crowd.

It’s the kind of prospect that makes international basketball so compelling, even for seasoned professionals, let alone fans. You gather together, travel to far off places playing in hostile circumstances with only those wearing your colours to rely on.

In a big picture sense it’s absolutely the kind of experience a young Canadian team needs if it’s going to be forged into the kind of steel hard enough to stay strong in those kinds of environments in the future, with medals on the line.

It’s exciting to think about, and will be absolutely riveting to watch.