KEY POINTS:
Tall Black Paora Winitana still sympathises with young Australian gospel singer Skylla Halstead, the embarrassed subject of his basketball chivalry.
Halstead suffered the choke all solo performers dread, midway through singing the Maori words to God Defend New Zealand before Monday night's Olympic qualifier in Melbourne.
It wasn't a microphone malfunction, and the silence was deafening. Halstead's expression said it all.
No one was offering help so Winitana, lined up with his team-mates on court, broke away and offered comforting words.
She eventually re-started her rendition, hesitated again, then completed it to a roaring ovation from the 6000-strong Vodafone Arena crowd before departing with a kiss on the cheek from Winitana and a hint of a smile.
"She just put her head down and looked like she was going to cry," Winitana said yesterday. "The guys were saying, 'Go out and support her, Paora', so I just walked out and asked if she was all right.
"She just said, 'Hey, I've lost the words'. I said, 'You want me to help you? I'll sing with you, just have another shot'."
Having quietly said "Sorry guys" to the crowd, Halstead then tried to hand over the microphone to Winitana before starting again as he prompted the words in her ear.
"I really felt for her. She was a pretty good singer, she just forgot the words," he said of Halstead, a prizewinner at last year's Australian Gospel Music Awards.
For all his sympathy, Winitana admitted it was strange that Basketball Australia hadn't discovered a dinkum Kiwi to perform the anthem.
"I thought out of all the New Zealanders over here [in Australia] they could find someone to sing it."
A year ago in Melbourne the Tall Blacks were irked when the Australian singer got several words wrong during the English version of God Defend New Zealand.
Basketball Australia chief executive Scott Derwin said he and the Melbourne crowd were all "sympathetic" towards Halstead. "We have no games in Melbourne in the foreseeable future so whether we use Skylla again is not an issue at the present time."
Sydneysider Rita Dunn will sing the New Zealand anthem at tonight's second match at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.
- NZPA
