After months of waiting on a decision by Steven Adams and OKC on his participation in this years Oceania series, today it has been revealed that unfortunately this year won't be the year we see him pull on the black singlet for the first time.
One can only speculate as to why he won't be participating after feedback a few months ago seemed quite positive...A big factor is probably the well documented coaching change, with Scott Brooks being relieved of his coaching duties and former University of Florida head coach Billy Donovan coming in. As well as the recent re-signing of Turkish big man Enes Kanter, a restricted free agent, Kanter was offered a 4 year $70 million offer sheet by the Portland Trail Blazers and the Thunder opted to match the offer to retain his services! So the training camp and pre season battle for the starting spot will be a very competitive one and Steve (and his management) might not want to risk slipping down the pecking order...Which sucks for Tall Blacks fans, but is completely understandable.
As we all know by now Australia have assembled one of the stronger Boomer squads in recent memory and Steve's presence obviously would have been huge, especially matching up with Andrew Bogut! Unfortunately it was not meant to be this year, but no doubt conversations will continue between him and basketball New Zealand and hopefully he will make his international debut in the near future!
Speaking of the Tall Blacks, the boys had a very convincing 84-63 win over Great Britain yesterday in their first official game of their build up for the Oceania series! Corey Webster was the stand out scoring what I believe is the most points he has scored in a Tall Blacks game with 32 on 10-15 shooting! Isaac Fotu didn't have the best shooting night of his life but had a pretty useful overall stat line of 10-16 (game high) and 6 assists, Mika Vukona joined also got into double figure rebounds with 11 and Everard Bartlett chipped in with 15 points in 14 minutes off the bench! But everybody made valuable contributions...Also quick shout out to Dion Prewster and Duane Bailey on making their "official" debuts after the closed game a few days earlier! They are now in Croatia to play a few games against, well Croatia (Duh!!!) and Slovenia. Full stats from the Great Britain game can be found here
AP
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