Nauru won't be in Palau for the Mini-Games

Nauru hasn't played in a major FIBA Oceania event since 2001 so we were pleased to see that they planned to send a team to Palau for the upcoming Mini-Games. Unfortunatly, they had to withdraw both their men and women squad from the Games. We don't really know why they did it but there should be some financial reasons, or maybe they are simply lacking of players.

Nauru is the smallest country affiliated the FIBA Oceania and with a little more than 13,000 nauruans it's pretty hard to build a competitive basketball team. The country is also in a deep financial trouble and they might be unable to pay the airfare costs to Palau. We hope they would be able to field a team in the next South Pacific Games in Apia, Samoa, in 2007.