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LAUREN Jackson still is hanging in and working to make the Australian Opals team for the Rio Olympic Games this year but her WNBL days with Canberra are done, the Caps releasing her from her lucrative contract.

Jackson, 34, and at her peak for a decade the No.1 woman basketball player in the world, has managed just six WNBL games since signing a reputed $1million five-year deal which required her to play three seasons in Canberra between 2012-16.

The Capitals are on a 0-15 record heading into tonight's road game in Bendigo and now, at least, can move forward knowing LJ's return isn't on the horizon or any more imminent than Basketball Australia's free-to-air TV deal.

An undisputed champion wherever she has played, it is not Jackson's ability which is on the wane - it is her body which now is betraying her.

A new knee injury setback for the four-time Olympian and 2006 World Champion forced Canberra's hand, Jackson now with 10 knee surgeries in two years.

Opals coach Brendan Joyce last year told me Basketball Australia would give Jackson every opportunity to be fit ahead of Rio, saying "Lauren at 80 per cent would still be a massive asset."

BA and the Caps are expected to make a joint announcement next week regarding Jackson's future, her past the most exemplary in the sport's Australian history.

Jackson carried the flag for the Australian team at the 2012 London Olympics, the first female basketballer to achieve the honour. Fellow Australian basketball legend Andrew Gaze was the first from our sport to carry the flag, at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Her loss to the game is massive but, as Rudy Tomjanovich long ago said, never underestimate the heart of a champion.

CAIRNS tonight hits Sydney on a high after taking out reigning NBL champion New Zealand on New Year's Eve but the Kings are an enigmatic opponent for the men in Orange. While the Taipans have kept alive their faint hopes of a final four finish, Sydney can play spoiler and with more guards than Fort Knox, can better exploit the absence of Markel Starks (hamstring). At its best, Cairns would win this handsomely. But its form has been as erratic as its win-loss record suggests, making the Kings a worthwhile punt for the upset. That is, of course, unless Cairns genuinely has turned the corner.