Last of the Tall Timber
Tagged in: Tall Blacks
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No one in the room will ever forget the morning a downcast Tony Rampton pulled out of the Tall Black team preparing for the 2004 Athens Olympics.
For several days, he had run up and down the practice court with a huge padded oven mitt on his hand, desperately trying to protect the thumb he had broken in action against the Australian Boomers the previous week.
Finally, frustration got the better of the stalwart centre and he informed his team-mates he was withdrawing from the campaign, only to be talked around by then-assistant coach Nenad Vucinic.
The thumb mended, he took his rightful place in Athens and no one outside that room was ever the wiser.
Four years later, Rampton (31) has finally given up on the Olympic dream, stepping down as now-head coach Vucinic readies his players for a last-ditch shot at the Beijing Games in August.
With his departure, the last of the Tall Black “footers” – players standing at least seven feet (2.13m) tall – falls.
“At times, Tony has been the only seven-footer in the team,” observes Vucinic. “Losing him now, after losing Sean Marks and Ed Book in recent years, will be a huge loss for us.
“We just have to find younger players of that stature to replace him … that’s never easy.”
New Zealand has two “footers” on scholarship at American colleges – Calum Macleod at Valparaiso University and Alex Pledger with University of Missouri-Kansas City – but neither has yet played for the Tall Blacks.
Rampton debuted for the national team in 1999 after a US college career at Iowa State University. He was NBL Rookie of the Year that year and, in 2000, dominated the New Zealand league, earning Kiwi MVP, Outstanding Forward, Outstanding Kiwi Forward and the rebounding title while playing alongside Vucinic with the Nelson Giants.
Later that year, he was named Most Valuable Player when the Tall Blacks won the William Jones Cup in Taiwan and was selected for the Sydney Olympics.
Rampton was also a major factor (7.3 points, 12.0 rebounds) in New Zealand’s series upset over Australia in the 2001 FIBA Oceania Championships, but was sidelined by an ankle injury as the Kiwis enjoyed their finest hour on the world stage – the FIBA World Championships in Indianapolis the following year.
“Tony was really promising,” recalls Vucinic. “He was a big man that could run the floor and he had that outstanding season that really set him up to play in the Australian league.
“Injuries made it a lot tougher for him, but he worked hard to make himself available for the Tall Blacks each year. He still had a very, very good international career.”
Over the past nine years, Rampton has attended two Olympics and the 2006 FIBA World Championships in Japan, and won a silver medal at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games.
Now married with a daughter to former Tall Fern Nicky Thompson, he held off retiring immediately after the Tall Blacks’ disappointing loss to the Boomers in last year’s Oceania Olympic qualifying series, but even a summer to reconsider has not rekindled the fire.
As he leaves, Rampton pays tribute to Vucinic as a “competitor and a winner”, thanking his mentor for helping him develop into a professional basketball player.
“I really enjoyed my time last year in the Tall Blacks and would have hoped that the result was different,” says Rampton.
“As my family situation has changed, I feel that I cannot commit to the Tall Blacks.”
Rampton will turn out for Devon Dynamos Taranaki in the 2008 Dominion Finance NBL, tipping off next week.
