Hoops

Cedric Jackson interested in playing for TallBlacks

They still would fall short. 6 NBA players speaks volumes. I'm not saying they are a rubbish team by all means, but adding Cedric Jackson doesn't simply make them better than the Boomers.

While Cedric is good, he still is just an NBL caliber player.

Full strength boomers would put away New Zealand comfortably. Most of NZ team are NBL players as opposed to the Boomers who are either in NBA or Europe.

Patty Mills > Cedric Jackson

There is still a limit of only one naturalised player per team, which prevents you from drafting a whole team or entirely skewing the likely result.

Yes, well you can imagine FIBA would like more of a spread of NBA-level talent to make the events a bit more competitive.

Therein lies the problem.

There is conflict between a country's nationality laws and FIBA regulations.

Correct me if im wrong, but FIBA states that you simply need to be a citizen of the country.

That's all well and good, except that countries have different criteria and as above, many (if not all) have discretion to give citizenship out willy-nilly.

Andray Blatche is a classic example; he was "naturalised" by the Filipino Government, yet he had spent no time whatsoever living there.

The funny thing was that he couldn't compete at the Asia Games as he was disqualified for not having met the three year residence requirements, yet he was perfectly eligible for attend the FIBA WC's and performed exceptionally well.

New Zealand will fast-track citizenship by grant if you are an elite sportsman. I was lucky enough to benefit from it.

All it requires is a formal letter from the national sporting organisation (i.e. Basketball NZ) essentially 'endorsing' the athlete and saying they have a good chance of being selected for the national team.

Ced would have to get residency however, as I'm not sure whether he has gone from a Work Visa to Residence or whether he still operates on a Work Visa.

Mystro, at least we won't have to put up with the Casey Frank v Horvath battle as to the naturalised playing position - although both are/were close to retiring in any event.

I would have thought naturalisation was years away for Jackson.
Are the Kiwi rules different to Aussie rules?

P.s. I'm still not sure about Te Rangi.

The last time his footwork was any good was the night of that pub fight.

Our lack of a point guard has really hurt us.

Tait has done an admirable job but Ced is just on another level.

If we had Ced, Webster, Fotu, Loe(or Vukona) and Adams we would have an NBA and Euroleague level starting 5.

a single conviction as an under 20yo is not the end of TeRangi's international career Anon.

Penney has been a bit up & down in Spain where as Isaac Fotu has been consistently solid.
Wouldn't be surprised if Penney retired from international basketball & to be honest Vukona probably isn't far behind him.

A full strength Tall Blacks side with Jackson steering the ship would spoil a few teams tournaments and would most definitely be "legit".

The goods news is that John is in the country, the bad news is his luggage went missing, whilst trying to sought that out he missed the flight to Adelaide.

We are working with QANTAS to get him on the next flight here.

So if you were headed to the airport this morning maybe find something else to do for a while.

Regards

Ben