When Mika Vukona packed his national basketball league championship ring and left Nelson in 2007, Nenad Vucinic, the Giants coach at the time said: "He will come back. Mika is Nelson now."

They were prophetic words. After two seasons away, the Tall Black forward has become the ecogise Giants' key off-season signing, choosing to return to Nelson for the 2010 campaign.

He left the top of the south after Nelson won their third NBL title so he and wife Vanessa could be nearer family in Auckland for the birth of daughter, Gia. He spent 2008 with North Harbour before a contract quirk with Melbourne's South Dragons of the Australian national league prevented him from joining a New Zealand team for the 2009 domestic league.

Those two seasons have proved two too long.

Vukona, now with the Gold Coast Blaze in Queensland, said the return to Nelson had been the hot topic in his home this week.

"Our season is only just starting here on the Gold Coast and Vanessa and I are already talking about coming back to Nelson. We've missed the place, missed the people, missed the Giants. It's a decision that felt right from the moment it was made."

Vukona, born in Fiji 27 years ago, initially moved to Nelson for the 2000 season, joining the Giants as a raw but athletic schoolboy from Tauranga. He won a national secondary schools title with Nelson College, became a Tall Black and a New Zealand Breaker after developing his game with the Giants and won that NBL ring in 2007. One-off seasons with Manawatu and North Harbour brought little reward but he won an Australian championship in his year with the South Dragons before the team opted out of this season's ANBL.

Generously listed at 1.98-metres tall, Vukona has carved a reputation as a relentless rebounder, one of basketball's premier defenders and an under-rated scorer. Australia learned a painful lesson when the Tall Blacks snatched the Al Ramsay Shield and top seeding from the Oceania zone at next year's world champs behind a 25-point, 12-rebound game from Vukona.

As one of the senior internationals in Vucinic's young international team, Vukona knew he needed to provide leadership – and scoring.

"This year's Tall Blacks programme [in Europe and trans-Tasman] opened up my eyes to a different way to approach the game. I learned a lot off Kirk [Tall Black captain Kirk Penney] about taking on extra roles. If the Giants want me to look to score more next season, it's something I will take with open hands."

Giants coach Chris Tupu calls Vukona an "X-factor" addition for Nelson.

"There's just a handful of players in the NBL you could attach that description to, players who can change a game or change a team by themselves. Mika's in that category, whether he's rebounding or defending an opposing player or using his athletic ability to change the tempo.

"He's got qualities you can't coach and he's a winner – at secondary school level, in our NBL, in the Aussie league. He's a champion and he understands what it takes to win."

Those qualities have made Vukona a valuable commodity in the NBL and he was approached by Hawke's Bay and Wellington, as well as Nelson. A brief visit here before the Tall Black season helped make up his mind.

"I'd had surgery on a hip fracture from a collision with a team-mate at Dragons training and I needed a bone graft. Then the league was in trouble and was on and off and the Dragons decided not to field a team. I'd looked at Europe as an option, then signed with the Coast but everything was still fairly messy.

"Then I arrived in Nelson, caught up with Toops [Tupu], Claire [Giants trainer Claire Dallison] and some of the boys and it felt like I was home. All that confusion faded away.

"Nelson's where it started and I guess in many ways, I never really left."

Vukona will join the Nelson Giants at the end of the Australian season early next year.