Funding constraints impacting Tall Blacks

You won’t catch Paul Henare going capin-hand to the Government begging for money.

It’s not that the Tall Blacks coach wouldn’t love even a slightly bigger investment from High Performance Sport New Zealand than the $150,000 Basketball New Zealand received this year.

After all, they’ve got a Fiba World Cup buildup campaign to fund after qualifying for basketball’s showpiece event in China in August with an emphatic win over Syria in Wellington on Sunday.

‘‘We’re fighting tooth and nail at this stage to come up with significant funding to allow us to prepare for the World Cup as best we can,’’ Henare said after the win.

‘‘That’s tough to do with the limited amount of funding that we get.

‘‘Everything will be planned out carefully in terms of that balance of how much we’ve got in the kitty to spend, who can host us and if those teams will give us good competition and good camps.

‘‘It’s great to get it locked in now in December so we can have a good solid nine months of planning to put a good campaign together.’’

With Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson in attendance on Sunday, Henare was asked if he had any message for him around funding.

‘‘I don’t think any message I give to him will make any difference to be honest. I’m not trying to be cheeky about it, I just don’t think it really matters. The most significant way we can send a message is by doing what we’ve been doing on the floor, for the last 18 months and last 18 years – however long we’ve been competing on the international stage.

‘‘I think we’ve been speaking at a pretty decent volume for long, long time now.’’

Henare’s side has won eight of its nine World Cup qualifiers to sit top of group E in the Asia qualification zone.

They’re ranked 38th in the world in a truly global sport, but the HPSNZ funding model rewards medals at peak events, especially the Olympics, and the potential for medals at future events, again with a focus on the Olympics for Olympic sports.