By Greg Robertson
As the Tall Blacks bow out of the FIBA World Championship following the loss to Russia, the shot clock looks like it is up the careers of two stalwarts of New Zealand basketball.
Veteran captain Pero Cameron and shooting guard Phill Jones’ careers have snuck in to span three seperate decades, starting in the mid 90s, and Cameron’s response to a foreign journalist asking if it was the last time in a Tall Blacks uniform gave clue to his future prospects.
"I think on the court, definitely," he was reported as saying.
"I don't want to say anything right now, but probably. That's for other people to hear and not you guys.”
But Jones was more definite: "Yeah, this is it for me”.
Top scoring teammate Kirk Penney gave homage to the pair. "It's really, really sad when it was Pero and Phill's last hooray.
"It really hurts, man, because they didn't have a chance to go a little bit further in this tournament when I feel like we should have.
"It's one thing to get buzzed by a great team and it's another just not to be able to play your game. It hurts to know we go out in their swansongs.
"For well over a decade, they've done so much for New Zealand basketball. Pero wound back the clock in this tournament, played some fantastic basketball and showed what he's been able to do for so many years, and he's such a special player.
"And Phill's no different. He's filled it up, been big for us at different moments during the tournament and I've enjoyed playing alongside him for many years."
Penney is tipped to take over the captaincy of the Tall Blacks.
But the praise didn’t stop there with head coach Nenad Vucinic keeping it flowing.
"We wanted to win this for Pero and for Phill, who have now retired from international basketball," Vucinic said.
"As a coach, I had asked both to come back and play and without them there's no chance we'd be in the second stage.
"And Pero being Pero, he's always going to play down his importance and influence on how we play and he's always going to put himself down, saying he didn't play well, and he shouldn't. This world championship was a tribute to both of them for 17 years of international basketball.”
Between them, the pair has clocked up over 100 games for New Zealand and with Vucinic's contract with Basketball New Zealand soon to expire they could be joined by the head coach on the retirement bench.
"I really don't like to talk about those things straight after a tournament because you need to think rationally about those things," he was reported as saying.
"It's a two-way thing – whether I would want to continue and whether BBNZ would want me to continue.
"I'm just looking forward to enjoying a night with the team. They're all friends and they'll still remain friends whether I'm involved or not in the future."
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