Tall Blacks coach Henare plays long game Warriors not the bad guys in coaching saga
Paul Henare is taking a big risk with his beloved Tall Blacks.
But it’s one the passionate and invested national men’s basketball coach is prepared to take as he looks to build the depth his team needs to survive, and even thrive, on the modern international hoops landscape.
By electing to use the Fiba Asia Cup campaign as essentially a development tool, as well as a chance for his senior stars to get an extended off-season rest, Henare risks both cheapening the Tall Blacks jersey and undermining the team’s hard-earned international reputation.
Faced with a growing list of defections, Henare made the big call to give all his established players the international season off. That left him with essentially an under-23 type group to take to the team’s first appearance at the Asia Cup in Lebanon (August 8-20).
If Steve Hansen did it with the All Blacks there would be an outcry. But Henare might just get away with it because of the legitimacy of his reasons.
For starters, opposed to All Tall Blacks, as Blacks, essentially volunteer their services. It is an unpaid vocation, especially in New Zealand where the funding agencies have yet to got their heads around the differences between legitimate global sports, and, well, playing netball or hockey.
Tall Blacks do it for the love of their country and because, frankly, it’s a pretty special brotherhood in the team. They earn their money the rest of the year.
When Henare started plotting this campaign it became apparent he was going to be down on troops. Mika Vukona is rebuilding his battered body, and was a reluctant starter. Alex Pledger, too, needed to clear up a concussion issue.
The Webster brothers, Corey and Tai, were both chasing their NBA dreams, and it was difficult for them to commit. Then American college standouts such as Tai Wynyard, Matt Freeman, Jack Salt and Sam Waardenburg were all ruled out.
Henare could have taken a mixed group, with Tom Abercrombie, maybe Corey Webster, Isaac Fotu and the Perth-based Jarrod Kenny as his senior pros. But then it dawned he had the chance to kill two birds with one stone.
Soon the Tall Blacks will enter the World Cup qualifying process, which will take place in six designated windows between November 2017 and February 2019, and this was a chance to rest key men ahead of that commitment.
Also he desperately needs to develop the next tier of top Kiwi talent, and this campaign will fasttrack that process with five debutants and young comers like Shea Ili, Finn Delany and Reuben Te Rangi emerging as his senior leaders by default.
‘‘I’m always going to do right by the singlet,’’ declares Henare, as passionate a Tall Black in his day as there was. ‘‘Think of the scenario of playing China at home next July and we have to win to get through to the second round of World Cup qualifiers. If players are unavailable suddenly you’re saying ‘OK guys, we haven’t used you at all, but now we need you to come in and play China in a game with a lot hanging on it’.
‘‘This is the best way right now for them to gain experience and exposure against high quality, high intensity opposition. So if that time comes when their number is called down the track, they’re not totally unprepared.’’
Henare says the way he’s ‘‘building depth’’ is no different to what China is doing with its dual national squads and even Australia going entirely with NBL players in their Boomers squad. ‘‘It’s just our next level is so much younger and so much less experienced. It looks like a dramatic change but it’s something most countries will have to deal with in this new landscape.’’
Henare’s former national teammate and now boss at the Breakers, Dillon Boucher, has no problems with the youth movement. ‘‘I don’t think it’s lessening the jersey; it’s probably just where the game has evolved to. Now it’s all about the long-game, rather than the short one,’’ he says.
One day Henare will get Steven Adams and all his college kids and have a heck of a team. But there are a lot of days when he won’t have them, and that’s what he’s preparing for now.
‘‘There is no greater learning experience than being thrown in the deep end and seeing if you can swim,’’ adds the Tall Blacks coach with a knowing grin. Let the splashing begin. OPINION: At first glance it appeared that the Warriors had let down the country by not allowing Stacey Jones to work with the Kiwis at the World Cup.
Kiwis coach David Kidwell revealed last week that he’d asked Stephen Kearney if he could have Jones as one of his assistants.
Kearney said no and the Warriors looked like a club that didn’t care about the national team.
How could a club that recruited their head coach from the Kiwis turn its back on this country when it came calling? Especially so given Warriors managing director Jim Doyle is a former CEO of the New Zealand Rugby League.
But the Warriors aren’t the villains in this and it highlights yet more ineptitude at the NZRL.
There will be about half a dozen Warriors’ staff involved with the Kiwis at the World Cup. If the Warriors were to give up Jones, too, they’d lose him until early February as he’d be entitled to a month’s holiday plus the usual Christmas break after the World Cup.
The NRL season has been another disappointing one for the club and they’ve never looked like being in contention for the top eight.
The continual problem has been their dreadful starts to the season.
It just doesn’t work for Jones to be involved with the Kiwis and it’s unknown whether he actually wanted to be involved anyway.
However, it was a surprising decision from Kidwell to portray Kearney to the media as the bad guy in all of this.
Kidwell has refused to comment on the rumours that Brian Smith could be one of his assistants at the World Cup, but quite happily spoke about Jones.
And just what on earth is going on at the NZRL in their search for assistant coaches?
Willie Poching and Justin Morgan were dumped after last year’s poor Four Nations in England and in March McNamara was appointed.
They could only get one on board in time for the Anzac test in May and haven’t had anyone since mid June when McNamara quit.
Does it really take this long to find someone to help coach the Kiwis?