Australian basketballing royalty Andrew Gaze has reflected on what he accepts is a sad situation surrounding Liz Cambage following her latest comments.
31-year-old Cambage is attempting to fire up her international basketball career and told Bleacher Report that Nigeria wants her to represent them.
Cambage's father is Nigerian.
“Like, why does Nigeria want me to leave Australia and go represent them?” she stated.
“We’re filing for me to leave the Australian team so I can represent Nigeria.
“I’ve been in cahoots, I’ve been talking to them since all of this happened. This is what I mean, people don’t know the truth.”
That take has since been discredited by Nigerian women’s basketballer Promise Amukamara.
But the stunning suggestion from the former Opal comes despite Cambage’s alleged racial remarks towards Nigerian players during a practice match in 2021.
In speaking to Bleacher Report, Cambage reasserted her view that her reputation had been deliberately tarnished.
Gaze, as a former board member of Basketball Australia, famously tore strips off Cambage for her assertion that she wasn’t supported at the Opals.
Now, the 58-year-old says he hopes Cambage finds peace with the situation.
“It’s very difficult when your own teammates, the coaches, the opposition team and all those who were there for the incident have one story and Liz has a different one,” Gaze began on SEN's The Run Home.
“It’s very hard. The thing about this whole thing, it’s so disappointing Liz Cambage is behaving in this way because she’s a star player… she’s a superstar and I didn’t know how to respond to this because it’s very frustrating.
“I hope she finds peace… with some of her comments and the lengths she’s going that’s been refuted by all… it’s sad.
“I have genuine sympathy for her and honestly, hand on heart, I’ve said my piece on her in the past and the way it infuriated me, her allegations against Basketball Australia and her teammates… that’s infuriating for me because I know those people intimately and they could not be further from the truth in my judgement.
“It’s been infuriating in the past but I’ve got to overlook that… I hope that she can find peace in her life, I hope she can find joy in her basketball and she can move on and perhaps park some of the narcissistic nastiness in the way she’s gone about it.”