Basketball: Promoted duo face tall order on tour of China

By PETER JESSUP

When Daryl Cartwright and Paora Winitana were team-mates in the New Zealand under-23 side to the junior world championships in Melbourne in 1997, they had their first sighting of China's Yao Ming.

He was 2.2m tall then. Now he is 2.28m (7ft 6in), the biggest professional basketballer in the world.

Cartwright and Winitana will encounter him again when the Tall Blacks tour China.

The pair are the two new local faces in the 12-man squad. Naturalised Americans Ed Book and Terrence Lewis are the other new caps. World championship rules stipulate that only one of them can play in Indianapolis in August.

Cartwright and Winitana were surprised at their selections. The former was called into the training camp at the last minute as cover for injuries, and the latter is just back from two years of Mormon missionary work in Sydney.

"I had no expectations because of the late call-up," said Cartwright, 25, an Auckland forward. "I went to give my all and must have done something right."

At 2m, he is the third-tallest in the team behind veteran centre Rob Hickey and Book, both 2.1m.

Cartwright is an energetic player who stood out from an early age. His size made basketball his game in home-town Whangarei, and he spent three seasons with the now-defunct Northland Suns before heading south in 1997.

Four of those seasons were spent with Tab Baldwin, so he knows what the Tall Blacks coach wants.

Cartwright was the captain of last year's development tour to the United States and Europe. The hidings the young New Zealand side received meant a steep learning curve. Since then he has been steadying the rebuilding Auckland Stars team, who have several teenagers.

A job as schools coaching director for Auckland basketball allows him training time.

Winitana has a similarly busy life in the sport. On Thursday he left the Tall Blacks camp in Hamilton for training with North Harbour, then yesterday flew south with the team for games against Canterbury last night and Otago tonight. He earns his living as a development coach.

The 25-year-old guard grew up in Hawkes Bay and shone soon after taking up the game at 15, making junior development tours in 1996.

He has two brothers who have played for Maori representative teams, as has one of two sisters.

His mother, June, was a netballer, and father Joseph still plays rugby for the Hastings club side Tamatea, at 46.

Winitana played for the Harbour Kings from 1996 to 1998, and, in 1999, went to the Central Coast north of Sydney to spread the word for his church. He struggled with the intensity of the Tall Blacks camp, but says Baldwin helped him out.



The team assemble in Auckland on May 27 and leave two days later for their three-test tour. Then Hungary come here for five tests.

The Tall Blacks will also play in Europe - Germany and Yugoslavia among their intended opponents - before going to Indianapolis.

* Basketball Australia's chief executive Scott Derwin is here this week to discuss further contact with the Boomers and a New Zealand entry in the Australian league.