The Tall Blacks have confirmed their involvement in the upcoming 34th Basketball SuperCup, to be held on 12-13 August in Hamburg, Germany with a range of NBA talent set to make an appearance.
New Zealand (ranked #26 in the world) will join hosts Germany (#11), Canada (#15) and China (#27) at this event, which allows the Kiwis to do some fine tuning just two weeks before the start of the FIBA Basketball World Cup in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia.
New Zealand first face Canada – led by Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse and with NBA star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander expected to be part of the team – in one SuperCup Semi-Final on day one. Germany, led by NBA players Dennis Schroder and Franz Wagner, take on China in the other game with the winners meeting in the Final the next day. A game to determine third and fourth place will also be held on this day, with all games expected to be available for Kiwis to view via the Courtside 1891 app.
Tall Blacks head coach, Pero Cameron says this tournament will provide the squad with two games against elite competition ahead of the FIBA World Cup.
“Any time we play against a team like Germany it’s a tough encounter, and being able to also play Canada and China is great; we need to be as prepared as possible heading into the FIBA World Cup so this level of competition is helpful for us,” says Cameron.
“We’re still a few months away from naming our final squad of 12 for the FIBA World Cup; in the meantime we’ll have some training camps, we’ll have other friendly games [against other World Cup teams] going on in addition to the SuperCup.”
Germany head coach, Gordie Herbert gave praise to the Tall Blacks and the other teams competing at the Basketball SuperCup.
“New Zealand is one of the dark horses in world basketball. New Zealand is often forgotten when listing the best teams, but they play very good basketball there. In total, we have three high-class guest teams with very different basketball styles at the SuperCup. That should be very interesting and I’m really looking forward to that.”
Looking ahead to the FIBA World Cup, Coach Cameron says that he is extremely proud of the Tall Blacks group and their journey over the past few years.
“When we look at the two-year process we’ve just gone through with World Cup qualifying games, I’m very thankful to have gotten here [qualify for the World Cup] – and we did it thanks to the athletes who put their hand up to help get us over the line. So my hat goes off to the players, the staff, coaches and everyone who has put in the hard work over this time.
“There’s still a lot to happen and to navigate through, but I’m really happy to be on this journey with these guys and really proud of our group – I can’t wait to take them to the world Cup in August and hopefully we can make some noise.”
The FIBA Men’s Basketball World Cup 2023, set to take place from August 25 to September 10, 2023, will see the Group Phase take place in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia. The Final Phase will follow in the Philippines capital city of Manila.
The draw for the FIBA World Cup will be held in Manila, the Philippines, on 29 April. The draw will announce which pool the 32 teams will be placed in for the first round of the Group Phase, which teams they will face in the first round and which country – Philippines, Japan or Indonesia – their games will be based in.
Find out more at https://www.fiba.basketball/basketballworldcup/2023
