Basketball: Defence system key to Tall Blacks campaign

Tab Baldwin

New Zealand basketball coach Tab Baldwin hopes a radical defensive system will tip the scales in his team's favour at the world championships starting on August 19 in Japan.

Having emerged from unheralded status to finish fourth at the last world championship in 2002, Baldwin says other teams now knew how the Tall Blacks operated.

"We don't sneak up on anybody now -- everybody respects us, everybody understands much better how we play and will be much better prepared for us," Baldwin told NZPA from Buenos Aires, yesterday.

On their South American tour which ended yesterday against Argentina with their sixth defeat in seven matches, Baldwin had employed the defensive system and is satisfied that the players were finally coming to grips with the complex system.

Although losing 72-85 to Argentina, Baldwin said that the Tall Blacks' second half defensive performance had given him confidence the team was on the right track.

Their other results on an arduous tour -- five straight losses to Brazil and a solitary win over Venezuela by 100-70 -- don't make good reading as players were asked to play slightly out of the square.

"We are running some different stuff than before and it has got some fairly significantly complex components to it.

"To be honest we struggled with some of the execution of it at times in our defensive system and we've had a great learning curve over here with Brazil and the way they beat us.

"Then we played Venezuela and Venezuela just had no idea what we were doing and we were able to create tremendous problems."

Baldwin said against Brazil's and Argentina's "great players and great teams, we really struggled to execute everything and get it working right".

But against Argentina in the second half, the team definitely had the edge and "our players were beginning to show they really understood what we were after and it was very effective".

"When you hold a team like Argentina to 30 points for a half when they are under some pressure to win the game, you've done a real good job.

"If we can now replicate that and even improve a little bit more, it is going to build an awful lot of confidence in the team."

Baldwin calls the defensive system, for want of a better term, RAD(ical).

"We installed this defence (system) last year and I have been working on it for a whole season over in Turkey.

"I ended up having a tremendous amount of success with it over there in terms of confusing offences and I've got a lot of confidence in it.

"It's a complex defensive system and . . is aimed at tough teams that cause you problems through their athleticism or through their tactics and fortunately in South America, we've run into some great teams and great players and it has been a great learning curve for us.

"We are trying, within the flow of the game, to jump from one type of system to another type right in the flow and it's not common to do that.

"We use certain keys based on what the offence is running to key us to these switches and it requires five players to make an instantaneous jump from playing one style of defence to playing another.

"Obviously when you get it right, it creates quite a bit of confusion in the offence and when you don't get it right, sometimes you look terribly confused.

"But sometimes that even works too, because the offence can't figure out what you are doing.

"More often than not, you have to get it right and we are starting to get that switch --it is starting to become more second nature to us now.

"I just believe that when we go to a tournament like the world championship, we have to do something a little bit different.

"We are just not going to stand up to these teams man to man on individual talent and the players are very committed to our tactical approach to the game and they are working really hard to get it right.

"It's not easy but we're getting there and my confidence is pretty high right now."

At the other end of the court, Baldwin is pretty satisfied as the shooters were sinking the baskets regularly.

He reckons the present Tall Blacks are a much better team than they were at the same time four years ago and better than the Athens Olympics team.

"But in saying that, we have to acknowledge that four years ago we were completely unknown quantity on the international basketball stage and people have to remember that while we finished fourth, we won four games and lost five games in 2002 and some of those losses were heavy.

"When you compare that with the Olympics team -- that team actually played much better.

"We were in every game, had a chance to win every game in the last minutes, maybe not the China game but certainly Spain, Argentina and Italy.

"And those three teams -- Argentina won the gold, Italy the silver and Spain were undefeated through the pool round.

"We had all those teams on the ropes right up to the end and I'd say we are a better team now than we were at the Olympics two years ago."

There was a great atmosphere and attitude in the team now.

"'When we look back to the Olympics the were some issues in the team that probably didn't help us.

"There is great harmony and sense of purpose in the team now."

The only concern he had was star player Mark Dickel who was carrying a niggly knee injury which Baldwin hoped would come right with adequate rest and treatment.

The Tall Blacks reassemble on August 9 to prepare for two matches against Qatar on August 11 (Dunedin) and August 13 (Invercargill) before leaving for Tokyo, Japan on August 17.

- NZPA