Basketball New Zealand

NZ Tall Blacks haka (FIBA)

Scott Preston, Stuff
The Tall Blacks’ 78-56 loss to Russia has not only ended the team’s run at the FIBA World Championship for Men but also the international careers of captain Pero Cameron and shooting guard Phill Jones.

The veteran pair, who both came into the national men’s programme around the same time in the mid-1990s, returned to the Tall Blacks fold this year for one last title tilt after a season or two away and bowed out yesterday at Sinan Erdem Dome in Istanbul.

When asked by a foreign journalist if that was his final game with the Tall Blacks, Cameron said: “I think on the court, definitely,” before elaborating slightly: “I don’t want to say anything right now, but probably. That’s for other people to hear and not you guys.”

Jones, who had made himself unavailable for selection after 2007 until this year, was more forthright, stating: “Yeah, this is it for me.”

“It’s really, really sad when it was Pero and Phill’s last hooray,” said Kirk Penney, the likely successor as Tall Blacks captain, who has averaged 24.7 points a game at the world championships.

“It really hurts, man, because they didn’t have a chance to go a little bit further in this tournament when I feel like we should have.

“It’s one thing to get buzzed by a great team and it’s another just not to be able to play your game. It hurts to know we go out in their swansongs.

“For well over a decade, they’ve done so much for New Zealand basketball. Pero wound back the clock in this tournament, played some fantastic basketball and showed what he’s been able to do for so many years, and he’s such a special player.

“And Phill’s no different. He’s filled it up, been big for us at different moments during the tournament and I’ve enjoyed playing alongside him for many years.”

Head coach Nenad Vucinic, who played with Cameron and Jones on the 2000 team at the Sydney Olympics, was equally effusive with his praise.

“We wanted to win this for Pero and for Phill, who have now retired from international basketball,” Vucinic said.

“As a coach, I had asked both to come back and play and without them there’s no chance we’d be in the second stage.

“And Pero being Pero, he’s always going to play down his importance and influence on how we play and he’s always going to put himself down, saying he didn’t play well, and he shouldn’t. This world championship was a tribute to both of them for 17 years of international basketball.”

With Cameron and Jones definitely stepping away, both having logged over 100 games for New Zealand, the Russia game could also be Vucinic’s last game in charge of the Tall Blacks as his contract with Basketball New Zealand will soon expire.

“I really don’t like to talk about those things straight after a tournament because you need to think rationally about those things,” he said.

“It’s a two-way thing – whether I would want to continue and whether BBNZ would want me to continue.

“I’m just looking forward to enjoying a night with the team. They’re all friends and they’ll still remain friends whether I’m involved or not in the future.”

Vucinic will now prepare with his Darussafaka club in Istanbul for the Turkish league and European seasons.

As the Tall Blacks reflect on a third straight top-16 finish at a world championships, Russia’s American coach David Blatt offered the words they probably couldn’t muster themselves after a 22-point elimination loss.

“We kept them to 56 points and that’s no easy task against a well-coached and well-drilled team that runs offensive sets that are far more advanced than any other teams run here and has such a gamebreaker as Penney,” Blatt said.

“That team deserves a lot of credit back home and they deserve a lot of credit on the world stage. We made them look less efficient and less attractive today but that’s a great group of guys and a great team that’s beaten better teams.

“They have played great basketball, they run stuff that’s really difficult to guard, and Nenad’s doing a great job with them.”

So, the Tall Blacks bow out of the championships with a 3-3 record – wins over Lebanon, Canada and France, and losses to Lithuania, Spain and Russia, three teams still alive in Istanbul – proved Penney to be a world-class player, unearthed a future star in Tom Abercrombie and before their loss to Russia had the third-best scoring offence at the tournament.

“I told the guys in the changing room that, of course, we’re going to be disappointed with how we played in this game but I’m really immensely satisfied with what we’ve achieved the last couple of years,” Vucinic said.