Czechs not challenged during basketball tour of N.Z.

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32367, 5 August 1970, Page 10

Czechs not challenged during basketball tour of N.Z.

(By R. 0. DEW)

was ho doubt that x the whirlwind visit of the outstanding Czechoslovakian team, Slavia Auto Skoda, to New Zealand did much to promote interest in men’s basketball in New Zealand. The team, one of the finest to visit these shores, played to capacity crowds in all six matches of its New Zealand tour.

However, it would be unwise for the New Zealand Men’s Basketball Association’s tours committee to consider having teams of this strength visit the country too often. This team, with its average height of 6ft sin, was far too good for any opposition which could be provided for it.

Not even the New Zealand team could hold the tourists down to a reasonable scoring rate and it was fairly clear in all six games they played that they were never extended. The games, from the Czechoslovakians’ point of view, were no more than demonstrations.

Such effortless and overwhelming defeats can only serve to emphasise the enormous gulf between New Zealand’s standard and that at world levels. Slavia Auto Skoda was by no means a world class team—merely a club side with some very tall and very talented players. Much can be learned from a tour by such a team but walkovers such as it enjoyed can hardly be expected to encourage the leading New Zealand players to devote themselves with even greater diligence to improving their skills.

These reversals can only bring home to them the fact that they will never reach world class in their playing life-times. The Czechoslovakians also underlined the need for tall players in New Zealand. It is an unfortunate aspect of basketball that tall players have an advantage over shorter ones but if New

Zealand ever hopes to reach Olympic or world championship standards it will have to develop a team of containing at least three players close to 7ft tall, several others in the 6ft sin to 6ft 7in bracket and none less than 6ft.

From the point of view of the player of average size, this inevitable emphasis on height must be a discouragement In New Zealand it is still possible for a player with the right skills, to reach national level even if he lacks inches but it will not- be too long before the tall men take over. And then there is the very real danger of the sport developing into one which caters for a minority —the handful of men who have to bend to pass through doorways. There will be virtually no chance or room at the top for the others.

While in New Zealand, the Czechoslovakian team scored 717 points, easily exceeding the century in each game. It had only 399 points scored against it and the closest any team came to matching it was the North Island. It was beaten by 46

points. Of the three provincial sides which played the tourists, Canterbury fared the best. It lost by 49 points.

Although defeat was inevitable, the New Zealand team was rather a disappointment. It lost by 55 points in the first test and by 56 in the second. But there is no doubt that the Czechoslovakians put more effort into the two tests than into any of the other games. The New Zealand team suffered from lack of match practice and it is clear that if New Zealand wants to put up a good showing against overseas teams in future it will have to have much more intensive preparation.