Tough World Cup draw for Tall Blacks

The Tall Blacks will play European powerhouse Greece, Montenegro and Brazil in Group F at the FIBA World Cup basketball tournament in China this year.

The draw was made in China yesterday with New Zealand’s games to be hosted in Nanjing.

New Zealand are ranked 38th in the world, Greece are eighth, Brazil 12th and Montenegro 28th.

Greece topped a super-group including Serbia and Germany in the World Cup qualifiers. World Cup finals first-timers Montenegro had seven wins and five losses in finishing third in their European group and South American superstars Brazil qualified with nine wins and three losses from the Americas’ Group F.

Far from fearing the draw, Tall Blacks head coach Paul Henare welcomed the challenge of a fifth consecutive World Cup for his team, and the prospect of continuing a run that has seen the Tall Blacks alongside world powers the USA, Argentina, Serbia (formerly Yugoslavia and Serbia and Montenegro) and Spain as the only teams over the past four tournaments to qualify for knock-out play.

‘‘This is always an exciting part of the journey to a World Cup, to finally find out who we will play and begin to put our plans in place,’’ Henare said.

‘‘Obviously it will be tough, it should be and will be, that is basketball. Our world ranking consistently puts us in amongst the world’s best teams, but basketball is one of the true global sports, with anyone in the top 50 or 60 capable of beating a top 10 team on their day.’’

‘‘Greece and Brazil will be the obvious favourites in the pool, but Montenegro is also a proud basketball nation, we will get to work on some plans on how to achieve success against them all.

‘‘My job now, with the coaching and support staff, is to pull together a preparation that will give us a shot of playing to our potential, and then of course selecting the final roster .’’

The tournament format is cut throat, with the top two from each group advancing to the round of 16 and a shot at the medals, while those finishing third and fourth will play in classification 17 to 32 matches.

The highest ranked team from Oceania at the World Cup will book a berth at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Australia – ranked 11th in the world – have drawn Canada (ranked 23rd in the world), Lithuania (sixth) and Senegal (37th) in Group H.

Should New Zealand progress from group play, they will cross over with Group E, those teams being the United States, Turkey, Czech Republic and Japan.