Tagged with: Tall Blacks
Unprecedented things keep happening in the basketball realms of New Zealand and we’ve just had the men’s and women’s FIBA U17 World Cups so you’d better believe the list is now a little longer.
Kiwi basketball has been on a roll lately. On top of another classic NBL season, on top of the Breakers returning to local ownership (and local values), on top of whatever Steven Adams is getting up to at any given moment…
The Tall Ferns recently got back from an Asia Cup jaunt in which they were pretty impressive on the way to a fifth-placed finish. Now it’s the turn of the Tall Blacks to do the same thing.
A little over a year ago, the only basketball team from Aotearoa to ever make the semi-finals of a FIBA World Cup event at any age grade, men or women, were the Tall Blacks of 2002. Now it’s happened twice in twelve months.
These are heady times for basketball in Aotearoa. You only have to tune into any random NBL game to witness the calibre of our emerging young talent and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
A few months ago, the Tall Ferns set out to qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympics. They did not make it. So can the Tall Blacks end the drought instead?
There’s one thing you can never doubt about any Tall Blacks team: no matter who’s got that black singlet on, they’re going to bring the passion, the commitment, the mana that has become a prerequisite for this team
The Tall Blacks always bring a certain level of mana with them no matter who’s reppin’ the jersey. There’s going to be passion and cohesion and defensive grit. Regardless. That’s just how this team operates
When you send a developmental squad to the regional champs, you sort of have to temper expectations. The Tall Blacks weren’t exactly at full strength at the last Asia Cup but even that squad looks like men against boys compared this one
So... the Tall Blacks played over the weekend. There wasn’t much of a deal made about it, in fact you’d be forgiven for not even realising those games were happening, but they did. The second one was a bit of a sitter against Guam which in which they eventually eased to a 19-point victory but the first one... mate.
Oh yes. That is Tall Blacks basketball right there. Two more games to determine their exact finishing position and there just so happened to be a bit on the line as well with a spot in the Olympic qualifying tournaments next year to slip into the shopping cart as well if possible.
The result wasn’t the important thing as the Tall Blacks faced Greece in their final first round game at this basketball World Cup. It was a game where the winner would advance and the loser would fall into the classification rounds but when you’re the heavy underdog coming up against the NBA MVP then you don’t have the luxury of knowing that a positive performance would equate to a positive result.
This was their chance. This was the one they could really target. Lose this and the other two wouldn’t even matter, a win and they’d keep alive any legit hopes of advancing beyond the first group stage.
So when the Tall Blacks came up against Brazil in their World Cup opener it didn’t matter how well they’d gone in their extended preparations. Those preparations are just ways of ensuring they’re at their best as they try to bridge the talent gap that already exists between them and their opponents.
Last week they polished off a couple games against Japan, this week the Tall Blacks got some very useful preparation in against the might of Canada… who may have won both but the two games served up drastically different vibes for the Tall Blacks going into the World Cup.
Dunno about you but I’m getting pretty pumped about this basketball World Cup. Most teams are amassing as we speak, getting in the final licks that they hope will give them that crucial one percent extra, with a tad over two weeks to go until the big show tips off.
We’re still two weeks away from the day that Paul Henare announces the Tall Blacks’ official World Cup squad. Before then there’s a training camp in Japan (we’re they are right now) with a couple games against their hosts to follow, then two games against Canada in Sydney… and straight after that we’ll get the final cuts to the squad.
It is with a heavy heart and a conflicted mind that I say to you now something that you pretty much already knew: Steven Adams will not be playing for the Tall Blacks at the 2019 World Cup. He was named in the 25-man longlist last week but that was just to cover all bases, it’s since been confirmed via a statement released by his agency that the dream is on hold until some other time in the hypothetical future.
All them trips throughout Asia and back as the Tall Blacks sought qualification for the 2019 FIBA World Cup came to their conclusion in late February with a dramatic 69-67 win away in Jordan followed by a bit of a disappointing 86-80 defeat in Jordan.
The Tall Blacks already know that they’ve just got to take care of business. They qualified first from their initial group and are sitting pretty in first in their second stage group right now too.