The New Zealand basketball team isn’t as widely followed as their rugby team. How many of you would like to back a team which won only against Angola in basketball in the 2000 Olympics?

Wikipedia has more vital information:

The Tall Blacks is the nickname of New Zealand’s national men’s basketball team and not a number of large black coffees. The name was chosen as it reminds people of New Zealand’s Rugby Union team, the All Blacks. For sponsorship reasons, they are often referred to in New Zealand media as the Burger King Tall Blacks.

So with the biggest win versus Australia, tying the on going 4 match series 1-1, the Burger fellas are bound to feel good. The New Zealand domestic league is followed religiously by all of three people but that number is bound to grow as well after this big win.

Whatever happens, I will love the innovation behind the name of the team. All New Zealand teams contain black (All Blacks, Black Caps). Basketball players are tall.

So we will call you the Tall Blacks!

Do check out the Kiwi Hoops and Basketball.org.nz websites for an indepth look into Kiwi basketball. New Zealand basketball is growing and it is evident from New Zealand being the semi finalists in the 2002 Basketball World Championships. Burger King is very pleased.

Update: The tall blacks are 2-1 ahead in the series now with a convincing win in Australia!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 16th, 2006 at 11:13 am and is filed under Misc. Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.