"His knowledge of players, teams and coaches is way up there and everything is easy. And his English is getting better, so that's helped him," Cameron said wryly.
Fanning moved to New Zealand this year to further his coaching career. He was assistant coach of the Nelson Giants in the NBL and did enough to catch the eye of the Tall Blacks.
Fanning is a self-confessed basketball-head and is also assistant coach-video co-ordinator of the Delaware 87ers, an NBA Development League team and affiliate to the Philadelphia 76ers.
Toronto Raptors centre Jonas Valanciunas and Houston Rockets forward Donatas Motiejunas are sure to have dominated Fanning's and Gorec's time over the past two days. The young giants have been Lithuania's leading scorers and are developing into one of the premier front courts in world basketball.
The Tall Blacks experienced what Valanciunas is capable of three weeks ago, when New Zealand played Lithuania in a World Cup warm-up in Kaunas.
He scored 19 points on six of six shooting to lead Lithuania to a come-from-behind 85-79 win.
"They're a very physical team," Tall Blacks forward Mika Vukona said. "They've got big bodies and NBA players in their team.
"It's good we played them in the pre-season tournament so we know what we're dealing with. They really attack the boards with their big men and can shoot it outside, plus they've got a lot of experience."
It should come as no surprise, then, that Lithuania are ranked fourth in the world. They finished third at the 2010 world championships and were runners-up at last year's European Championships.
But Vukona will not be satisfied with another second-round exit, as he regards the team as one of the most talented Tall Black sides to play at an international tournament.
"We want to get a lot further than just getting past the first round," Vukona said. "We've put in all the hard work and, when you do the hard work in pre-season and come into a tournament like this, you expect to go a lot further than a lot of people expect."
