Alley OOPS: basketball's meltdown

That was the early 1990s, when Andrew Gaze and Lanard Copeland dazzled sell-out crowds at Melbourne Park with their alley-oops, and the administrators of Australia's home-grown sporting religion, the AFL, were fretting about the potential loss of talent to this fast-paced and glitzy American sport.

But less than a decade later, things took a turn for the worse and have been on a slide ever since.

Some say the downturn started when Michael Jordan retired, others say it was in 1997, when the National Basketball League switched its season from winter to summer. Others blame it on the loss of free-to-air television coverage. It is likely that it was a combination of all three factors, as well as structural and operational issues within the league itself.

Either way, a decade on, professional basketball in Australia has reached its nadir.

In the past year, four of the NBL's 13 clubs have folded or been placed in administration, while a fifth — the Singapore Slingers — withdrew to avoid the same fate and a sixth, the Wollongong Hawks will fold at the end of the season. The Hawks were the last of the NBL's foundation clubs but cannot afford the $1 million bank guarantee to join the league next season.

The writing has been on the wall for some time, but the situation was brought to a head when, just before the beginning of this season, the Sydney Kings and the Brisbane Bullets folded. While the failures sparked a round of damaging publicity for the league, and forced a rushed rejig of the season's timetable, they also confirmed for Basketball Australia the pressing need for comprehensive reform, a process that had been embarked upon in May, 2007.

Since this season began, the Sydney Spirit and the Cairns Taipans have been forced to turn to the league for support as they, too, were on the brink of collapse.

The question many who remember the glory days would be forgiven for asking is, how did it come to this?

Two key problems that have plagued the NBL in recent years have been an inefficient management structure and a significant gulf between the NBL clubs and the sport at a grassroots level.

The structure of the NBL board — where a representative from each club has sat on the board for the past four years — has, according to administrators and owners alike, prevented the league from moving forward.

South Dragons owner Mark Cowan, whose team joined the league just three years ago, acknowledged that this structure was counter-productive.

"Everyone tends to, with the best intentions in the world, protect their own little patch of turf," Cowan said.

Basketball Australia has assumed responsibility for the governance of the sport since the clubs voted unanimously to accept the reform package in November.

Since then, the NBL has been governed by an interim board made up of four independent members, one NBL representative — the Melbourne Tigers' owner Seamus McPeake — and one representative from Basketball Australia — president John Maddock — though those two members will also be replaced in two years to ultimately give the league a completely independent board.

Basketball Australia Scott Derwin said the new structure, it is hoped, would ensure the reformed league was subject to stricter standards, and the interests of individual clubs would not be pursued above the interests of the sport.

More complicated, and perhaps even more damaging, has been the NBL's drift away from its natural support base at the grassroots of the sport.

While some clubs have a strong connection — the Tigers still run basketball camps and clinics, and have their own junior teams — and others, such as the Dragons, are working hard to forge those links, the league has a lot to do to make up for lost time.

That will involve fostering geographic links between the NBL teams and their local organisations, such as basketball associations and schools.

However the effects of this disconnection have gone beyond eroding the NBL's fan base. According to Andrew Gaze, who is also a member of the interim board, the malaise has affected Australian basketball's ability to produce and foster talent.

"Realistically, we have a void between the graduation of junior players into the NBL," Gaze said. "Right now, there is a missing link in the program. There is a link there, but it's not diverse enough that it can cater for greater volumes of players."

As a result, Gaze said, those players not identified by clubs early enough were often denied the resources to develop their game to a professional level, and were rarely detected at a later stage.

For all of the sport's problems at the elite level, however, the one fact that basketball people cling to more than any other as proof that the sport is not dying, is its rude health at the grassroots.

Basketball Australia proudly touts its 600,000 registered players — through local associations across the country — as evidence of basketball's continuing popularity.

The sport is also still strong among school-aged children, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics ranking basketball as the fifth most popular sport in that group, with a participation rate of 6.6 per cent.

But the league has struggled to convert such high interest into lasting commercial success.

The picture is not all doom and gloom, however. The WNBL, which is run as a semi-professional league, is in good health, and Australia still performs well at an international level. How long this can remain the case without a clearer national structure and a national showcase such as the NBL actively promoting the sport is not a proposition that basketball's administrators are prepared to gamble on.

MEDIA

WHILE many remember basketball's golden era as a period when the sport was featured on free-to-air television in prime-time, that time is long past and it is unlikely that will be the case again in the foreseeable future, at least for the men's league.

The WNBL does have one game per week being broadcast on the ABC's digital channel ABC2, but Fox Sports has been the home of the NBL for more than a decade now and, while this season has been something of a low point for the collaboration between these two bodies, with just one game aired live per week on a Wednesday night, both sides are confident that a reformed league will attract a much more comprehensive broadcast deal for next season and beyond.

It is thought — but unconfirmed — that the new deal will be worth around $35 million, but most important it is expected that, as of next year, Fox Sports will televise at least four games per week.

As well as the increased exposure for the sport, it is expected that Fox Sports will devise a new presentation package for NBL games to improve upon the current, bare-bones approach.

It is a development that South Dragons and Boomers coach Brian Goorjian said was essential to increasing the popularity of the game here in Australia.

"What our game is lacking right now is we've just got to get the public aware of it … compare what the public gets to see or what they hear about our game as compared to Australian rules football. If we had that kind of package on TV, if we had those articles in the paper and that support, then there's no doubt in my mind it would be what it should be, and that's got to be the goal," Goorjian said.

The revised season will consist of 14 home and 14 away games for each team, all of them televised, most live. Fox will also give the NBL four 30-second ad slots per game.

PARTICIPATION

IT IS basketball's not-so-secret weapon: the multiple sets of figures that demonstrate that, at a participation level at least, basketball in Australia is still going strong.

Basketball Australia lays claim to 600,000 registered players through local associations across the country. Then there are the independent studies that continue to rank the sport highly among Australians.

The Sweeney Summer Sports Report ranks basketball as the 16th most

popular sport among people aged 16 to 65 living in capital cities, with a participation rate of 8 per cent.

That list is topped by more casual individual activities such as the gym, with 30 per cent, bushwalking (26 per cent) and fishing (24 per cent). The more typical organised team sports only figure lower down the list, with cricket and soccer ranking just above basketball on 9 per cent, and Australian football with just 5 per cent. According to Sweeney, the basketball figures are even more promising when looked at in the 16 to 29 age bracket, where 24 per cent of males and 14 per cent of females participate in the sport.

And of considerable encouragement to the basketball associations is the fact that 25 per cent of those surveyed professed to having an interest in basketball, whether that be through participation, attendance at games, or following it in the media.

Tennis tops that list with 57 per cent, while cricket and the AFL round out the top three with 53 and 52 per cent respectively.

The sport is also still strong among school-aged children, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics putting basketball at 6.6 per cent, below swimming (17.4 per cent), outdoor soccer (13.2 per cent), netball (8.5 per cent) and Australian football (7.5 per cent).

INTERNATIONAL

NO MATTER how successful the NBL is in recreating itself over the coming years, the fact remains that it will always be lower on the food chain than the premier league in the world, America's NBA, and most likely, Europe's Euroleague.

But, South Dragons coach Brian Goorjian, himself an American, insists that this will not prevent the Australian league from improving beyond its current standing.

"If this league becomes strong, not only are we going to have great Australian content, we'll have great Americans as well," Goorjian says.

The chief executive of Basketball Australia, Scott Derwin, says he is comfortable with the fact that an Australian league will always play second fiddle to the big kids on the block, but he hopes a strengthened, reformed league will be an attractive option for Australian players as they develop, and a good place for Australians who have had success overseas to finish off their careers, as is the case for a number of female basketballers who have returned to the WNBL after successful careers abroad.

"With an Andrew Bogut, I don't think it matters what we have in Australia with the new league, Andrew Bogut is going to continue to play in the NBA and no one would blame him," Derwin said.

"It's without a doubt the top league in the world, it pays the best money in the world etc, but what we would like to think is that Andrew, towards the end of his career, would see an attractive proposition in the new league in Australia.

"What also we should be striving to do is to ensure that our young kids coming through see (the new league) as a real alternative for them to stay in Australia."

OWNERSHIP

NEW guidelines for ownership of an NBL club that were released last month will require each licensee to provide a $1 million surety to the league when they are granted a franchise, as well as a $1 million upfront cost for new licences.

The new requirements call on each consortium to devise detailed business plans, which include financial projections for the next three years, marketing, media and community relations plans to maximise exposure, and details of proposed venue deals to ensure clubs are able to make money from home games.

Each club will be required to contribute to a centralised fund to enable the league to market the sport and produce its own line of merchandise.

The league will also monitor the financial activities of the clubs to ensure they are being run responsibly and are complying with the salary cap.