LIB – Lebanon appoint Tab Baldwin as coach

BEIRUT (2010 FIBA World Championship) - Former New Zealand boss Tab Baldwin coached at the last two FIBA World Championships.

He's going to be at a third in a row after being appointed as the new coach of Lebanon.

Lebanon Basketball Federation president Pierre Kakhia confirmed on Wednesday that Baldwin has been handed the reins to the national team.

One of his opponents in Group D will be his old team, the Tall Blacks.

"I'm excited," Kakhia said in an interview with FIBA.com.

"He started in the American university system, coached New Zealand and has coached in Europe.

"He has a good experience."

Baldwin, 51, coached at Auburn Montgomery in NCAA Division II and then Central Florida in Division 1 before moving to the Otago Nuggets in New Zealand 22 years ago.

He had a long spell in charge of Auckland but Baldwin is best known for turning New Zealand's national team into a force.

With Pero Cameron among his leading players, Baldwin and the Tall Blacks made a stunning run to the Semi-Finals of the 2002 FIBA World Championship in Indianapolis.

They settled for a fourth-place finish but the team stayed in the limelight by competing at the Olympics two years later in Athens, a tournament in which they upset world champions Serbia and Montenegro – the side that had many of Yugoslavia’s gold-medal winning stars in Indianapolis from 2002.

The Tall Blacks then competed at the 2006 FIBA World Championship in Japan.

"New Zealand is one of the teams we face," Kakhia said.

"He knows the mentality and the way their players play.

"He has a good CV (curriculum vitae)."

His former New Zealand assistant, Nenad Vucinic, replaced Baldwin at the helm of the Tall Blacks after the 2006 FIBA World Championship.

While the national team boss of New Zealand, Baldwin also launched his coaching career in Europe.

He worked at clubs in Turkey, Greece and Romania.

"No doubt," Kakhia said, when asked if there was a sense of relief that Lebanon finally had a replacement for Dragan Raca, who coached the team at last year’s FIBA Asia Championship in China.

"The most important thing is to have a coach and for the long term.

"He is the coach through the qualification for London 2012 (Olympics). We asked him to bring his assistants, physical trainers."

Baldwin will first gather with Lebanon's preliminary squad of 25 players on June 7.

Kakhia said the country has grabbed the wild card to play at the FIBA World Championship in Turkey with both hands and run with it.

The national team has a budget of $1million US, $600,000 more than four years ago.

Lebanon will announce their full summer program on Thursday, but what is already known is that they will host Stankovic Cup in Beirut.

"There are 10 teams, including Iran, Qatar, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Jordan, Uzbekistan and others," Kakhia said.

As for playing at another FIBA World Championship, Kakhia said: “We’ve been to the last two, but Japan was in a different time zone as was the USA. Turkey is much closer, and the other difference is that this year we have a wild card.”

In addition to facing New Zealand in Group D in Turkey, Lebanon will go up against Spain, France, Lithuania and Canada.

Jeff Taylor
FIBA