i like the townsville taipans idea

why do people continue to push for brissy and sydney, they don't have fans, focus on cities with fans at the moment

improtent: where a human, usually a male, improves on their impotents.

asain countrys

DJRod posted recently suggesting that combining two age-old enemies in Cairns and Townsville would be a mistake. Might make more sense to combine Brisbane and Gold Coast?

Sh#t idea

I just hope they don't cut the league down to 8 teams just because the report says so. If 10 teams meet the criteria then let there be 10.
What also concerns me that if the league rationalises this much what does it do for the depth of the competiton in this country? Will it set us back or help us grow?
It is already really tough for young guys to come through the system, and with a rationalised competition, and with so many 'seasoned' and experienced players looking for a job, what will happen to the next generation of player coming through? Will then be able to get a roster berth, and even some court time?
I think for a couple of years if they do reduce the teams the younger generation will struggle to make it. It may even mean more players go to US College.
Lots of "what if's"...

Brisbane and Sydney is needed to attract Sponsorship for the league.

Yeah, combining Cairns & Townsville I would compare to combining the Crows & The Power.

11 teams in Australia, 3 in NZ (1 wellington, 1 Auckland and 1 Sth Island) and 4 Asian teams would give me the horn.

Asian teams should be 4 from either Hong Kong, Taipei, Manilla, Guam (American Territory with population of Canberra, just above PNG), Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore...... China and the NBA are in bed with each other at the moment so no point directly competing with them until the NBA goes bankrupt or realises Yao Ming is and will be the only very good player to come outta China.

Open import restrictions so asian teams are almost all asian players except for perhaps two OZ/NZ players and 1 - 2 'american' imports.

I've already mentioned it a dozen times here but southern hemisphere players should be included too.

Paz

I'm still amused at how NBL got to this stage in the first place...

I'm also amused that they had the gut to tell public that basketball is the most played sport in the country while the league suffers like this? obviously something wrong with the management themselves. they should be disgraced by that!

nbl could barely get sponsorship with sydney and brissy in the league, so there goes that theory

s30, you probably need to realise that Basketball is saying this about the NBL ...an organisation that for the last 35+ years "basketball" has had no control over.

Ricey- it's good to see another nob that talks about cities like Brisbane without knowing anything about the situation.
I was starting to wonder where people like you had gone- glad to see the verbal crap is back.

Well, there was some interest (that businesswoman for one) but how much would they have been scared off by the coming changes to the league? Why buy something now and get pinged when the licenses are revoked and reissued for $1m+ when you could just wait and make a bid later?

well now they're under one roof it's really something coming out of one source

I think we need to build a strong, stable domestic league and forget about expansion into Asia for the forseeable future, if not forever. This idea was part of ex-commish Burton's grand plan for the league, and you can see where that got us! Let's see if we can run a comp with the same roster of teams for a few years in a row, shall we?

Exactly Isaac.
They had a few people very interested but for various reasons it didn't come together.
Here in SA, guys, we perhaps shouldn't be so overconfident talking about what we think is going on or has been going on with complicated clubs, seeing that it's being reduced to 8 teams initially, we'd want to be in that or face the chopping block ourselves.
I haqd already mentioned previously that the 'crowds' in Brisbane were not an issue- Eddy has always looked after those closest to him (for better or worse) and the majority of seats were allocated to ABC staff who never showed.
Try telling Eddy that they should've been put back in the pool for fans to buy- Good Luck!
You'd cop an earful and not much more.
Those good seats were never available to purchase unless certain people knew who to contact at the Bullets to get around it.
They should've been released back for public sale on Ticketek if the clowns weren't going to show but that was never the case.
Get your facts straight before you proclaim to know what you're talking about with crowds in Brisbane.
They frequently had fans sitting in crap nosebleed seats due to sponsors not showing and Eddy not willing to take them off them if they were going to waste and sell them back to the fans at the end of the day- they are the ones that keep the game turning.

Growth into Aisa costs too much for a week in week out competition. Air fares are a killer.

Better to have the top 2 teams play in a Asian Champions League. the money made ion the finals can cover the costs. Have a couple of 3 game road trips f everybody in the comp.

The thing that worries me is the 40% ownership. It seems that they want State associations to become involved again wit NBL teams. Considering who much money they lose, lets hope BSA doesn't go down that path again.

If four clubs are in asia and they play each other in a conference style, as do the rest of the clubs then the roadtrips won't be as bad. If Darren Ng can score 47 pts in a game against an asian club then i think the quality of teams generally aint too good.

Not sure that that's a great metric to use - Darren can score 30 in our NBL here. His 44 the other day included a bucket of free throws. On his day and with minutes, I wouldn't rule out 35-45 in the NBL from him.

From what I can gather, those Asian teams are a mixed back. Some are national teams without imports, others run 5+ imports, etc.

The New NBL needs to firstly get a major sponser and a TV deal and you cant get one without the other. If Foxtel only want 8 team league then only have 8 teams it's better than struggling like the the league is for another few years untill all the teams collapse like sydney,brisbane and cairns. For those people who dont think you need a team in sydney your kidding yourself. For any major sport to survive it has to have a team in sydney look at all the major sporting leagues they all have teams in sydney.

Also the nbl clubs will need to do a better job attracting overseas talent we need exciting and athletic players to bring in the crowds. I dont want to see 5 guys on the court shooting jumpshots i find it boring and i've been playing basketball my whole life. I know you basketball purists out there will say that slik passing and hitting the open man for an easy jumpshot is good basketball and i would agree with you. But is it really something your average fan can appreciate?

Take the NBA for example ask anyone in street and they will tell you its the best basketball league in the world which to a degree it is. It does have the best athletes and by far the most talented players in the world. But how often do you see a nba team run a good motion offense and hit the open man for three. Not very often i bet! its all about going one on one and making the spectacular dunks that end up on espn and numerous highlight reels that your average joe fan will watch and say WOW!.

It sounds pretty silly saying the NBL needs better players to draw a crowd becuase that is obvious. What it needs is the attract the RIGHT type of player. At the moment NBL clubs look for shooters and distributers with their imports. There are enough of these players locally within australia watch a couple of aba games and you will see what i mean. Whats happened to clubs getting the super athletic swingmen who can jump out of the gym. Remember Dwayne Mclain, Leon Trimminigham, Calvin Talford, Bennett Davidson. All these players played in the league over 10years ago and there names are still recognisable becuase they were exciting to watch. I still remember watching the tassie devils play the kings and seeing calvin talford jump over what seemed like the whole sydney team to put in a tip jam. Nowadays you never see play like that in the nbl.

If the nbl can start bringing in players like that again i know that people will start going back to games.