Sunday Discussion: FIBA World Championships

We finished pool play at 3-2. Started up with losses to Lithuania and Spain, where we were competitive for stretches of the game, but gave up runs of points that had us trying to claw back double digit leads. We gave up a lot more easy points in the paint than we created ourselves.

Then we picked up wins over Lebanon, Canada and France. The France game was particularly impressive – we needed a 12 point win to finish third instead of fourth in the group and managed to do it. The third place finish is somewhat of a mixed blessing though – if we beat Russia tomorrow, our opponent after that will be Team USA.

So if NZ do beat Russia tomorrow, what players should you be keeping an eye out for on the NZ team?

The heart of the offence is former University of Wisconsin star, shooting guard Kirk Penney. He’s the second leading scorer in the tournament at the moment behind Luis Scola, averaging 25.4 points per game. He can hit the three pointer, drive to the basket for layups, and draw fouls (in his 37 point performance against Lithuania he shot 16-20 from the foul line). He doesn’t have the raw speed to beat good defenders one-on-one, but he moves a lot off the ball, and the NZ team set plenty of screens for him to work off.

Like Penney, forward Pero Cameron is a survivor of NZ’s 2002 world championship team (which finished fourth). A legend in NZ basketball, he’s playing only limited minutes in this tournament due to missing all of the NZ basketball season due to injury. He can score both inside and out, but his biggest contribution is probably his passing. He leads NZ with 19 assists in pool play, despite only averaging 16 minutes per game (that translates to 9.4 assists per 40 minutes).

Tom Abercrombie has been a revelation to me this tournament. Despite their nickname, the “Tall Blacks” aren’t actually that tall. But Abercrombie seems to have a nose for rebounds, and the team occasionally use his athleticism for alley-oop plays. He shares the rebounding duties with Mika Vikuna.

New Zealand shoots a lot of three pointers (like many international teams), and while Penney takes the most attempts per game, don’t be surprised to see half the team taking shots from outside the arc. New Zealand doesn’t have a lot of players who can create their own offence by themselves, but they work pretty hard to create shots for each other.

Weaknesses? An offence that leans heavily on the three pointer is always vulnerable to a bad shooting night, and New Zealand can’t always create easy buckets close to the basket to compensate. Plus their offence is basically “Kirk Penney” and “everyone else”. On defence, both Spain and Lithuania created a lot of easy buckets in the low post.

Australia didn’t seem to be able to get anything going on offense, and then Slovenia started burying them with threes. I have this fear that New Zealand’s offense could similarly implode at any time – I just hope it isn’t against Russia.

…they were beaten pretty convincingly by Russia today. Most telling stat? Russia outrebounded New Zealanad 41 to 25, which tells you a lot about how the bigger, taller Russian forwards pretty much had their way in the paint. The Russian defence was as tenacious as advertised, completely stifling New Zealand’s attack.

Kirk Penney had a game he’d be dissapointed with. His shooting radar was off, and he spent a lot of time on the bench due to foul trouble. His most succesful offensive play was drawing a foul – he shot 10 of 12 from the line.

Saw a little bit of Team USA running rampant over Angola. The poor Africans were simply overwhelmed. I think Russia will prove more robust on defence, but I think they’ll find it harder to score against the Americans that against the Kiwis.