Tall Blacks: decision time
by Niko Kloeten
As my dad so succinctly put it when the Tall Blacks were lagging begind the Australian Boomers by about 20 points, “They just have better players than us.”
This is an obvious problem.
The solution would be to get some better players.
In the final of my three-part series on the Tall Blacks, I will give my thoughts on who should stay who should go, and who should step in, with the 2010 world champs in mind.
Keepers
Kirk Penney:
You kidding? Without him we’d struggle to beat Fiji. Needs someone to lighten his scoring load.
Craig Bradshaw:
He’s athletic and skillful, attritubes notably absent from our other big men. Still learning.
Mark Dickel:
His last two games aside, he’s still our best passing point guard. Needs to get back to full fitness though.
Dillon Boucher:
One of a kind. Plays hard every second of the game and does all the dirty work. Needs four scorers on the court with him to negate his limited offence.
Lindsay Tait:
A superior physical specimen to the other two point guards on the team, Tait unfortunately wastes his athletic gifts with brain explosions. A steady diet of sudoku should give his gray matter a workout and improve his decision-making.
Pero Cameron:
His lack of athleticism is exactly why he will last longer than some players. Going forward he may only come off the bench for 10 minutes a game but he has unique abilities that need to be put to good use.
Past use-by date/Replacement
Phill Jones/Everard Bartlett
Jones was once a game-changing shooter but his skills have diminished with age. Bartlett is small for a shooting guard (1.86m) but he can jump, as his 2005 Australian NBL dunk contest championship shows. He was also the second-leading scorer at this month’s World University Games.
Casey Frank/Nick Horvath
At FIBA tournaments only one naturalized citizen is allowed per team. On the Tall Blacks that man is Casey Frank. However, fellow American and New Zealand resident Nick Horvath is a far superior player and he’s itching to play for the Tall Blacks. Unfortunately he hasn’t been able to get his New Zealand citizenship yet. Maybe he should tile Taito’s house.
Tony Rampton/Callum McLeod
This would be swapping one huge guy for a younger huge guy with more potential. Both guys are seven feet tall (2.13m) and McLeod could hardly make less of an impact than Rampton did against the Boomers.
Mika Vukona/Alex Pledger
Vukona’s problem is easy to diagnose but hard to cure: he’s a power forward in a shooting guard’s body. To put it in simpler terms, he is a 1.96m guy going up against players up to 15cm taller than him. Pledger is only 20, but he is enormous (2.15m) and at least the Aussies would have to pick on someone their own size for a change.
Paora Winitana/Thomas Abercrombie
You won’t find a better guy than Winitana, who helped singer Skylla Halstead when she forgot the words during her performance of the New Zealand national anthem before the first test. But he’s 31 now and he’s never made much impact at international level. Abercrombie is another youngster (20) but he’s really athletic and has great potential. Whether he’s any good at rescuing distressed anthem singers remains to be seen.
Paul Henare/Patrick Mills
Mills is an exceptional talent and he’s only 19 years old. There is a slight problem however: he plays for the Boomers. But I think I have a plan. Why not trade Mills (who is an Aborigine) for Hone Harawira? That way they’d get a politician who actually cares about Aborigines and we’d get a lightning-fast point guard with good defence, shooting ability and court vision.
Ok, so the last suggestion may be far-fetched. But it is clear the Tall Blacks can’t compete with the top international teams in their present state.
Cleaning house, so-to-speak, might hurt us in the short term, but with a core of young talent we should be able to shock the basketball world again in a few years’ time.