INCOMING Cairns coach Aaron Fearne says there will be no free passes to the "new" Taipans' squad regardless of the effort put in by players last season.

"What they did at the end of last year was outstanding," said Fearne, who arrived back in the Far North last Friday from a stint in North America mentoring Nathan Jawai.

"The excitement that was building with the rallying of the community and probably the players feeling pretty responsible to go out there and put on a good show was something that they did and had great results.

"But this is now a fresh start and a bit of a different situation and we’re definitely going to have to put a quality team out there."

Player negotiations have been on hold until the members of the "new NBL" are announced and the Taipans get the official go-ahead to compete in the league.

But Taipans officials have not been idle, targeting the players they will need to be competitive next season.

"We’ve been talking to people – like everybody has – but we’ve got a shortlist of people that we want, guys that we want to retain," Fearne said.

"But until it’s official that we’re in and the league’s going, it’s really a bit pointless to go any further than that."

Most pundits have the new league made up of nine teams – one less than last season – although it could be eight if Adelaide is unable to come up with the necessary $1 million guarantee.

Fearne said the decline meant the Taipans would have to recruit well.

"We need some talent out there on the floor too to win some games because every team’s going to be talented if there’s only nine teams.

"Less teams, more players, better teams. We don’t want to be a team of leftovers which we’ve had a bit in the past.

"The last few years have not been like that, we’ve had some very, very good talent.

"We have some guys that we do want to target and when it’s all official we’ll go after them pretty hard and see if we can land them but there’ll be other teams doing the same thing."

While Basketball Australia chief executive officer Larry Sengstock said last week the organisation was "not yet in a position to announce details of the outcome of the EOI (expression of interest) process", Taipans officials are hopeful an announcement on the make-up of the new league will be made this week.

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