Basketball: Breakers give Tall Blacks quick season rundown

Four Tall Blacks trained with the Breakers last night before hurrying back to camp with the national squad.

For Breakers coach Andrej Lemanis it has been a relieving three days, having Paul Henare, Lindsay Tait, Aaron Olson and Mika Vukona back in training.

It's been a brief learning experience, time to show them the team structure and the game plan he wants to pursue but nowhere near enough to instil the expectation they will run efficiently when the season opens in six weeks.

The Tall Blacks are in camp all week before they fly to Perth for games against China and Lithuania on August 9 and 10.

NBA trialist Kirk Penney is in town and joined them last night.

Mark "Sparky" Dickel will fly direct to Perth after getting married in Las Vegas today.

That could mean that Lemanis gets either Henare or Tait back as Tall Blacks coach Tab Baldwin is unlikely to carry three point guards in a 12-man squad for the Perth games and two more against Australia then Lithuania in Sydney on August 12 and 14, or for the three-game Oceania world championships qualifying series that follows it.

Lemanis said the Breakers had looked good in their brief time together.

The Oceania series is at Trusts Stadium on August 17, Manukau's new TelstraClear Events Centre on the 20th and in Dunedin on the 21st.

By the time that is over, the Breakers hope to have their two American imports in place. Rich Melzer is due to arrive any day once passport and immigration formalities are sorted out, and a second US national league player is considering a contract offer.

On August 23 the team fly to Brisbane for their first pre-season games.

Lemanis said his side looked good on paper but that meant little - factors including team dynamics, injuries and some luck would have as much to do with determining their season as did pre-season preparation, and he would not use the shortened and interrupted start as an excuse.

In the Tall Blacks' camp there is concern over a hamstring injury carried by United States-born forward Ed Book, the one restricted player allowed under international governing body FIBA's rules.

Auckland's Casey Frank has been linked with the squad but his residency permit and thus the FIBA clearance will not come through in time for him to replace Book and there is no other obvious fill-in.