KEY POINTS:
Long-serving Tall Blacks forward Dillon Boucher has announced his retirement from international basketball, Basketball New Zealand confirmed yesterday.
The 32-year-old, who made his international debut in 1999, will not be available for the Olympic qualifying tournament in Athens in July.
Boucher follows the lead of New Zealand teammate Paul Henare, who this month said he was taking a year off international basketball in an attempt to prolong his career.
Henare had missed the early part of the New Zealand Breakers' current Australian National Basketball League season after knee surgery .
Boucher, 32, told Radio Sport he no longer felt able to commit 100 per cent to international play, and it was time to step down and let younger players come through.
He will continue playing club basketball for the Brisbane Bullets in the ANBL.
Other Tall Blacks would also retire in the coming months, Boucher said, as the demands of year-round basketball took their toll.
Boucher was part of the Tall Blacks team which finished an astonishing fourth at the 2002 world championships in the United States, and played a vital role at the 2004 Athens Olympics, when New Zealand downed world champions Serbia-Montenegro 90-87.
He also featured at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, when the Tall Blacks took silver in the final, losing 76-81 to Australia.
- NZPA
