Basketball: Tall Blacks right on the Marks

By Peter Jessup

Sean Marks has been released by the Toronto Raptors to play for New Zealand in the upcoming test series against Canada and will return to Auckland next Tuesday.

Marks' availability followed lengthy negotiation with the National Basketball Association, which originally demanded an insurance contract the local association couldn't afford.

The NBA relented after intervention from world governing body FIBA, which was acting on a request from most of the 35 countries that have players in the American competition.

Despite the Raptors' failure to make the NBA playoffs Marks was not able to get to New Zealand for the Queen's Birthday training camp coach Keith Mair will hold at Nelson.

He will join the Tall Blacks next Thursday for the games at the North Shore Events Centre on Monday June 14 and in Nelson on June 15. He'll also do promotional work and some training with junior teams as the local league seeks to exploit his abilities as a role model.

The deal clears the way for Marks to participate in further Tall Black matches as the side gears up for the Sydney Olympics.

They, and the national women's side, go to the Jones Cup tournament in Taiwan in July then play the Oceania qualifying tournament for the Olympics at the North Shore Events Centre in September. Both the men's and women's teams are favoured to beat Guam, Fiji, Samoa and American Samoa for one of the 12 Olympic spots.

Both national teams then go to the United States for training and development work in November and the men will again have an end-of-year tour to Europe.

Auckland, meanwhile, have expressed surprise that their six-from-six record and championship lead hasn't been reflected in Tall Blacks sole selector and coach Mair's 22-man squad.

Only captain Pero Cameron and guard Paul Henare are named, the most unlucky to miss out given form being Dillon Boucher, who leads the league in field goal conversion with 71.4 per cent and is third Kiwi on the tendex ratings that measure players' entire contribution to the game.

Tall Blacks squad: Kirk Penney, Andrew Parke, Brendan Cathy-Pongia (North Harbour), Pero Cameron, Paul Henare (Auckland), Konrad Ross, Riki Strother (Waikato), Kent Mori, Tony Rampton (New Plymouth), Andrew Gardiner (Wellington), Ralph Lattimore, Peter Pokai, Brad Riley, Judd Flavell, Michael Tompson (Nelson), Robert Hickey, Dave Langrell (Canterbury), Glen Denham, Stacy Lambert, Phill Jones, Rob Tuilave (Otago), Chris Tupu (Adelaide).