The worst case scenario was that the Tall Blacks’ hopes of making the Olympics would already be over by now. They certainly didn’t hold anything back in preparation, taking an exciting looking squad around Asia and Europe for a bunch of weeks before finally getting down to the business of trying to qualify from the tournament in the Philippines.

The pre-tournament tours saw positives and negatives but will have been invaluable for the team, especially compared to some of their opponents who won’t have had hardly any time at all as a complete squad. Problem is, this was always going to be a longshot. Six teams are at the qualifiers in Manila. Two groups of three, with semis and a final and only one team progressing to Rio. As it happens, New Zealand drew the hosts and the highest ranked team in France. Bloody hell.

France were able to mount a convincing second half comeback to beat the Philippines in the opening game of the group, winning that one 91-84. Led by Terrence Romeo and Andray Blatche, the Gilas Pilipinas were dropping threes all over the show but 27 points from Nando de Colo and 21 from San Antonio Spurs icon Tony Parker saw the French home in the end. Entertaining stuff, actually, though the real impact for the kiwis was that it meant a win over the Philippines would secure a spot in the next round.

And once again the home team started off shooting fire from deep, but turnovers and quality NZ defence were taking away most else and with the Webster Brothers ducking, sliding and weaving all over the court it was NZ that got out in front. Blatche had his say in the second half but Isaac Fotu flipped in a few deep ones and Tom Abercrombie popped up with a couple jumpers. It was good, it was really good. The Tall Blacks played as well as you’d hope them to, showing up their opponents in most fundamental ways.

Tai Webster in particular. Keep this up and the 21 year old guard is due a big season with Nebraska in his senior year. The younger bro sparked up a great combination with the older bro as well, not to mention the danger they caused playing under and around the picks of Fotu. Once the big fella showed he could shoot as well, that was more than the Philippines could handle. Fotu shot 3/4 from 3pt, scoring 17 points. Meanwhile Tai W. scored 26 with 11 boards and Corey W. scored 23. Abercrombie added 13.

The Tall Blacks never quite pulled away but they felt in control for most of the second half, despite a few tweaks from the opposing coach – a certain Tab Baldwin. The lead got all the way up to 13 points, though with a shade under five mins remaining it was down to only five. Good thing the kiwis made their free throws then, keeping the Gilas at arm’s length for a crucial first up win.

So with a semi-final berth guaranteed, it was now about seeding in their second game vs France. That would be the same France that Boris Diaw and Tony Parker play for, yes. Fifth ranked in the world by FIBA. But for whatever reason – they were probably counting down the hours until France met Germany at the Euros later that day – the French didn’t really show up until late on in this one. They were strangely unmotivated, maybe a little complacent. Two things you absolutely couldn’t say about the Tall Blacks.

Clearly the New Zealand side is lacking in height, that much is clear by looking at them. However their level of effort and hustle in this one – those two famous battler buzzwords – still saw them comfortably out-rebound their opponents. Hell, there was one phase where they hauled in about four straight offensive boards. Which… also goes a way to explaining why they didn’t win this game, that they had five straight possessions and came away with zero points from them.

Again it was their defence that did it for them early. Offensively there were stumblings but off the ball the team were as well organised as they could possibly be, shout out to Coach Henare for that one. The French jumped out to a 10-5 lead thanks to a Joffrey Lauvergne two pointer (he of the Denver Nuggets) within three and a half minutes, though some late Tai Webster pops saw the Tall Blacks take a 14-13 lead into the quarter break. Next thing you knew Corey Webster and Tom Abercrombie were draining threes to stretch that into a legit lead.

And then it dried up. As well as the kiwis were shooting from outside, they were getting nothing to go by any other means and there was actually a near-five minute spell of scoreless basketball from both teams, broken thankfully by a Rob Loe… triple, of course. Half-time we were up 31-23, a famous result there for the taking.

The third was Corey’s show, scoring 11 points in that frame alone on his way to 21 for the night – back to back 20+ for the Breakers man. He was the only Tall Black in double figures and as he took over, the French started to fire up and the NZers got slightly timid, second-guessing themselves. Half-court sets either disappeared in favour of one of the Websters working a jump shot or the others simply missed their chances. To give the team credit where it’s due, they did manufacture some decent attempts but when your team is shooting 23.1% from 2pt and 40.7% from 3pt, you can see there’s not such a great balance there.

Blame the forwards. C. Webster may have only shot 7/22 but he still made enough shots for that to matter. Abercrombie meanwhile was only 2/11 for 6 point, Fotu 3/11 for 8 pts and Mika Vukona, who had a little foul trouble in patches, missed all six of his FA attempts for 2 points. Frankly, if this team is going to advance beyond their next game they have to get scoring from more than just the Webster clan (Tai was 3/7 for 9 pts and 8 rebs – his rebounding is a pleasant surprise, sweeping under the basket as Fotu boxes out, usually).

The Tall Blacks were still up 10 points after the third but Mickael Gelabale quickly cut that deficit down. Having missed everything from three for most of the game, suddenly France were draining every bloody thing. It wasn’t the starting unit either, it was the bench that grabbed this game by the collars and shook it into submission. When Corey Webster had opened up the fourth with a mid-range two, the score was 50-38. When Isaac Fotu dunked with 3:27 remaining, the score was now 60-54. NZ was outscored 28-11 in that final quarter and in a low-scoring game that’s how things go sometimes. There’s always the chance that one team gets hot and the entire thing changes. Which is what happened here, denying the Tall Blacks not only that famous win but a first seed in the semis.

This could have been so different if the kiwis could shoot, though maybe that would have woken the sleeping beast earlier. Only 38 points against in three Qs and 28 in the fourth, that’s not great.

Paul Henare: “I thought our on-ball coverage was lacking and we took a while to adjust to that. I thought their guards got a bit of speed up into their middle on-balls and then they made some very good plays and I thought defensively we made a couple of crucial errors where we over-helped or we lacked the rotation to give up easy points. So we’ll go back and look at the tape and see what we could have done differently but for the most point, for three quarters, we played a pretty decent game of ball.”

So now we play Canada. Not ideal, given here’s another team with comprehensive NBA talent on that roster. Just like the French they’ve left behind most of their top tier dudes, however they still count on Corey Joseph, Tyler Ennis and NBA champion Tristan Thompson. Not that Canada has been all that impressive so far. They had their share of trouble against Turkey (who France now play) and Senegal, in particular they’ve been abysmal from three-point range – which is a surprise for the players they have. New Zealand won’t be able to offer the same threat of size as Turkey and especially Senegal (who had eight blocks vs CAN) did but a frantic perimeter defensive game will deliver results too based on the group games.

That game is on Saturday night at 10.30pm NZ time, screened live on Maori TV as well which is a pleasant boost for the internet data usage. New Zealand just showed that they can foot it with a good team and as frustrating as this result ended up being, given the capitulation towards the end, it’s a positive when you can lose to a better team and still say that it was your own correctable errors that cost you. Fix that up against the Canadians and Corey Webster might even get a contract with the Toronto Raptors.

Despite under-performances, Canada and France are the two elite teams of this tournament. If we’d only beaten France then we could have had them up against each other and getting that eliminating done themselves. But then Turkey would have been no easy matter either – nobody in this Tall Blacks team is going to match up with Omer Asik, that’s for sure. Also just imagine what that might have done for tensions in the Oklahoma City Thunder locker room, which you could probably cut with a knife already after recent events. Catching an off-boil Canada team may actually be the best case scenario for NZ. Either way, they’re gonna have to beat some good teams if they’re going to grab that fabled Olympic spot and with the list of candidates down to four in Manila, the Tall Blacks are still there and playing (mostly) good basketball.

The dream lives on at least 48 more hours.