it should be impossible to "box" null (and I think it probably is). So the problem ought not to exist. So the problem isn't how do you unbox null, its "how do you provide a mechanism for signaling and handling this case".

I have found the requirement to provide a default "not found" value to be a useful bit of flypaper.

OTOH, Java currently returns null from maps where the key is missing so I suppose they will decide that backwards compatibility is more important than better behvior.