I should check the grammar and spelling.

Apart from the direct entry, there's no other positive from being in Oceania.

I think it should be a top priority

I've been asking for this for years. Oceania is a joke of a conference and has absolutely zero benefit for basketball in Australia. Give Oceania to the like of Fiji etc and lets go and play in a bigger, better conference...

Follow the lead of Soccer and jump into Asia.

What rubbish.. joining Asia, may i ask what is the benefit? I personally dont feel an NBL ASIA would be a success. The cost of running such a competition would be ridiculous, if we created an asia super league, you can bet your bottom dollar there would be maybe 4 teams from australia, VIC, SYD, QLD and WA, adelaide wouldnt be included i can assure you.

Argument better quality competition because we play China etc is rubbish. How strong are asian teams?? The current asian champions are Iran (who are totally crap), China is the only team and thats due to Mao, he wont be around that long. Please NZ is a much more competitive team and we should stick with that.

By staying in oceania, we can redevelope our local league and continue in the history of attending world championships and olympic games and continue the great rivarly of Australia V New Zealand. Like the rest of our sports do NR, Union and Netball.

Typical journalist with no idea at all about basketball weighing an opinion he has no idea about.

he should stick to rugby, absolute tosser..

So, we lose the near automatic qualification and replace it with near automatic qualification, but the Boomers get to play against Yao?

Big deal.....

So the Boomers and Opals get better by playing Fiji, Vanuatu, PNG and the Solomon Island???

Asia FIBA is much stronger than Oceania FIBA. Oceania has two FIBA ranked teams in the top 50 (in the mens), Australia and New Zealand. Asia has 11 teams in the Top 50 (mens).

The womens is similar. Australia at 3, NZ at 16. Then it's Fiji at 60. Asia has 9 teams in the top 50, with 3 in the Top 15.

Sitting on the "we beat NZ we are in" attitude would be great. This would mean that we would need to put more into qualifying and hence improve more.

I think there's a great deal of merit in going into Asia (in the long term) - they suck at the moment (tho. China surprised me A LOT at the Olympics), but if we were to join we would get $$$ and be in a much tougher (given time) qualification situation. I think Asian bball's main problem was that for a long-time they played their own high finnese. low physicality style of game. Here in Japan everyone thinks they are Allen Iverson - their guards are decent, but they really fall down in the front courts - where they completely soft (this is a no-no in intl bball as anyone knows).

They are capable of playing a more physical game (China, Lebanon, and Iran prove this - slightly) but they need to play similar teams to get an inkling of it in a high stakes environment. Australia (and slowly, slowly China) can provide that... The first few qualification tourneys would probably be easy but after a few years the Asian teams would adjust - for their benefit (and ours)...

"...China is the only team and that's due to Mao, he wont be around that long."

Hmmmm. Drb - I hate to be the one to tell you this, but "The Chairman" checked out some years ago...

;)

Drb....you were doing badly with your first post, and then had an absolute shocker with your second...

"typical journalist ....."

err...the article is attributed to Brett Harris, and if its the one I know then he's been writing basketball in this country longer than you've been dribbling, and one of the most decorated basketball journalsts we've ever seen ....not always popular, but one of the most "in the know" journalists the sport ever had as opposed to a

"Typical forum poster with no idea at all about journalism weighing an opinion he has no idea about"

I support AUS joining Asia.

The current FIBA world ranking system heavily discriminates against Australia/Oceania even though we win it "all the time" - setting aside 2001.

The Oceania championships are worth 50 points...with a multiplier of .1 which means the Opals get 5 points for winning it.....

The Euro championships are worth 50 points with a multiplier of 1 so Russia or Spain get 50 points for winning that.

In the eight year cycle Australia can win the championship four times for a maximum of 20 points, 30 points shy of what a European superpower gets for winning it once in that eight year period. In fact, the European teams finishing 1st, second and 3rd are all better off achieving this finish once as oopposed to the Opals winning oceania four times.

Asia is currently a weighting of .3 (it should be higher for women), add Australia to that competition and you would argue for the weighting to be redrafted up to .4 or .5.

The testament to how poor this sytstem works is the current Opals ranking (third behind Russia) despite going into the Olympics in second place and finishing above them in the standings.

If Oceania joined with asia, it may actually give NZ a better chance to qualify for big tournaments as well.

Looking at the posts I can see only merit in Oceania merging/joining with Asia.

In the article it mentions NZ joining Australia in Asia - not leaving them behind. I could see NZ qualifying for major tournaments as well as Australia - both men and women. Plus we will get to see the team play regularly - which is one the the things lacking at the moment.

Asia has cash, and basketball is rapidly growing in popularity and in standard.

Ok ... here i go:

Jonny - excuse the spelling mistake in reference to Yao my apologies i was typing so fast because of this ridiculous idea. Yao will retire and then what?? Leets joing that african area because of some new super star???

HO - granted this gent writes a few articles and been to a few world championships. However his main area is Rugby and i find it ridiculous that he is just going with John O'NEAL plan for soccer, there is no orginality to his opinion, he is copying the view of Soccer . I stand by my view stick to rugby as thats what he knows best!! By the way i am aware of my journalists so i recommend you go HO on that!

Annom - my argument reference the rivarly was to build it up more like the other sports do.

People ASIA is not the key, its about building a great competition internally and restablishing basketball at grass root levels with affliation to NBL and the national teams. If it goes to asia u can bet your bottom dollar teams will be culled, with adelaide being a high chance!

Drb, you are making things worse for yourself. This thread has nothing to do with the NBL. The post refers to the BOOMERS joining the FIBA Asia conference. Why would the Sixers by 'culled' based on whether the Boomers were to play China or Tuvalu to get to the Olympics or World Champs?

http://linky.com.au/5j1bs

Check it out Drb - i`m no Doctor but i hear this stuff works...

I don't get the fuss. Basketball can't be compared to Soccer. We already get into the World Champs/Olympics with a win in Oceania, something soccer wanted but couldn't get for a long time.

New Zealand are better than every Asian team other than China. Iran were the Asian Champs FFS, and they were flogged at the Olympics and we accounted for them with an understrength side earlier in the year. So basically, this 'improved competition' starts and ends with China. We want to move to Asia for one team, who we'd probably beat anyway?

As for the women, let's be honest, NO Asian team would challenge the Opals. The drop off after #3 in the world rankings (that's us ATM) is huge, and the best team in Asia is China, who we absolutely smashed in Beijing.

I just don't think a move to Asia would be anything other than a sideways one.

Its not a sideways move twenty four, because it allows us the profile of competing (and possibly hosting) legitimate championships on a regular basis.

You also need to consider that a move to Asia opens up the opportunity for our junior teams to qualify through this, providing much better competition than we recently faced in Guam :-(.

The problem is that there is the alternative. We stay in Oceania, play NZ who we flog at every competition bar the men (and their men are on the slide) and have no chance of an Oceania champions league etc etc. FIji might be a powerhouse in women in 35 years time, who knows?

Or lobby to join Asia, regularly get deeper (if not instantaneously better) competition at all levels and create opportunites for AsiaLeague etc etc which our best NBL teams can play in. Women's competition would be instantly better btw.

Asia also brings us much better rewards if we host events (TV and other media rights). For me its a no brainer....

sorry drb...your comment was "typical journalist with no idea about basketball"

On every front you were wrong.

Brett Harris is not your typical journalist, he was a basketball beat writer for close on 20 years....he won numerous nbl and wnbl awards...he authored the book "Boom" which was a treatise about basketballs popularity in the 80's and 90's and he broke stacks of huge basketball stories in that time.

Your view was not that he knew rugby best (you certainly did not say that origibnally) ....your view was that he had no idea about basketball....

seeing as you know your journalists lets have a little competition...name Brett's major daily contemporaries in the 80's and 90's....I'll even help you...West Australian - Dave Hughes...off you go....see if you can reel off any names other than Howell and Nagy..

I have to agree with HO on this one. A move to Fiba Asia is way more than a sideways move. It's a better overall conference with far better benefits than only playing NZ to get some sort of competition.

the typical journalist with no idea comment was in reference that he was using the template of John ONEIL for the soccer , as we all know John has held prestige position for Rugby Union in australia. I am stating rather than analysising the league he has just gone with that template for soccer which I think is poor. We have seen a lot of journo's writing crap commentary about the league is doomed and dead because sydney and brisbane have left the comp.

Besides the journo's you mention in melbourne the mike sheehan use to write about the nbl in the 80's and 90's and grantley bernard replaced him in that area.

I must add in the 80's i was only 7 years old but still recall the glory days of going to the old albert park watching the tigers v spectres, or the old coburg giant out at coburg, also the sunday games at nunawading stadium.

So, because we get to play more teams, that instantly makes the competition better? Even if all of those teams, short of China, would be no better than the competition we get now? And in the Opals case, none of them would be a challenge anyway?

I see, that is much better. How stupid I was to think otherwise.....

actually twenty four, i said the competition would be deeper, but not instanteously better....

In the women we would match up with china, korea and japan for a start, which would be better than anhilating NZ every time we play them. China and korea are better outfits than NZ right now....and with korea's women's league resuming, its future prospects are good. Sure, the Opals would win...but hey, they play practise series in China every other year anyway because they want that competition...

In the men we cop China and Lebanon and Iran etc...and yes they are not great teams, with our without Yao...but its better than simply playing NZ in three game series every year.

Perhaps you are only thinking Boomers and Opals, you need to also be thinking crocs and emus and saphires and gems.....its the whole picture...the chance to host Asian champs and get the media rights opportunities that come with that....the possibilites of a future asian champions league etc etc.

Cold hard facts? the chances of Asia developing into a competitive & effective FIBA zone for competition and qualifying purposes are far greater than the chances of oceania developing that way. You would want to be a part of that....Australia makes Asia better and Asia opens more doors for Australia...

I've done a little bit of research and found the following rankings in the 2 sections.
If there are people who doubt joining the Asia Zone will help the growth of basketball are crazy...
Just the rankings alone will increase the quality of ball...
More teams, closer score lines, larger support/crowds, not to mention there is an opportunity to turn basketball into a 12mth sport.


World Rankings are in brackets - NR is Not Ranked.


Men

Oceania
Australia (9) & New Zealand (14).

Asia
China (10), Iran (23), Lebanon (24), Korea (26), Qatar (27), Japan (33), Chinese Taipei (40), Kazakhstan (41), Jordan (42), India (46), Syria (46), Kuwait (52), Hong Kong (53), Uzbekistan (54), Malaysia (61), Philippines (63), United Arab Emirates (64), Indonesia (64), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (66), Thailand (69) & Singapore (70).


Women

Oceania
Australia (3), New Zealand (16) & Fiji (60).

Asia
China (6), Korea (9), Japan (15), Chinese Taipei (21), Thailand (40), Malaysia (43), India (44), Hong Kong (46), Kazakhstan (49), Sri Lanka (52), Philippines (53), Singapore (55), D.P.R. of Korea (59), Vietnam (61), Macau (63) & Lebanon (66).

I don't know how draws etc. work, but however it get's done it's got to be better than the current format & there will be greater opportunity to see our superstars in action.

Following on from this topic, FIBA.com has run a story today on their desire for Australia and New Zealand to join Asia.

Link: http://linky.com.au/ichpg

FIBA's Australian President Bob Elphinstone is behind the push into Asia, and it also quotes Goorj who is supporting the move. Interesting to note that BA's head honcho Scott Derwent has not stated their BA's position yet.

I think a move to Asia would be best for the sport of basketball.