Basketball: Tall Blacks look to recapture fire

The Tall Blacks have a 14-game build-up to the world championships in Japan next month as opposed to 18 before their run at Indianapolis in 2002.

It is testament to their rise in stature on the world stage after good performances there and at the Olympics in Sydney and Athens that other teams want to play them.

The only problem coach Tab Baldwin has with this preparation is that they start with the harder teams such as Australia, who are ranked ninth in the world, and Brazil, who are 15th, and finish with the weakest, Qatar, ranked 28th.

They play four different teams and have avoided any match-ups against the sides in their pool in Japan - the hosts, who are ranked 25 in the world, Spain ranked fifth, Germany (13), Panama (34) and Angola (17).

After the current series against Australia winds up with two more games in Hobart and Melbourne next week, Baldwin is unlikely to make changes to his 12-man squad unless there are injury concerns. The same 12 will go to Hiroshima for the World Cup games.

The coach is comfortable with the fact he has a stable squad that is largely unchanged bar the loss of Sean Marks to retirement since the Sydney Olympic campaign. The players all know each other well on and off the court and get on well, and that camaraderie and cohesion within the Tall Blacks is a major reason they succeed, he feels.

"There are few surprises for them and I don't think we'll present too many surprises to the opposition any more either," Baldwin says.

The Tall Blacks are not taken lightly anywhere any more.

"They all realise now that we can be a very, very tough team to beat. I think a lot of the teams at the world champs took note of what we did at the Commonwealth Games with some of our top guys missing."

But he needs everyone on the same page and all firing at 100 per cent if they are to achieve victories at this world champs and excite home fans as they did in 2002.

"We don't have any margin for error," Baldwin said.

"We need top performances from everyone. We can't afford to make mistakes and to miss shots. For us, the hardest thing is to lose by less than five points - it would almost be better to lose by a thrashing.

"When we lose by one or two we know it is those couple of crucial mistakes that have cost us."

In the build-up to the series against the Boomers he had to ask hard questions of the squad. "It looks like two-thirds are committed to win and have the necessary desire. There's still a few in the room that we still don't know about. When we're in a critical situation, are they prepared to give their all?"

But it was easy to motivate Kiwis to play against Australians and he expected the four games - the second of which is played in Napier tonight - to harden their resolve and toughen them mentally.

The four players who fought out the NBL final last Saturday - Stars Casey Frank and Dillon Boucher and Hawks Paul Henare and Paora Winitana - have slotted back into the team and changed up a gear without problems, Baldwin said, though Boucher missed game one with a corked thigh and a hand injury which were both expected to heal quickly.

Baldwin was disappointed in the final as a spectacle and believes the referees allowed it to get too physical.

"They tried to take control early but that frustrated the players and instead they lost a measure of control."

But it was a good workout for those involved and that finals intensity had been carried into the training camp. "We've got plenty of weapons and I'm comfortable we'll play well," Baldwin said.

As usual, the Tall Blacks' big problem is lack of height.

They will have to make up for that by applying the unexpected, with intensity, stamina, cohesion and an unrelenting approach.