I won't even go into most of that....

BUT, to the last question........there is a huge chance of history repeating if the league doesn't get the cap right AND police it. It should be one of the Number One priorities of the new league administration.

If you struggle to even pay a salary cap of $890,000 in a professional competition, a team should not be able to participate in that competition, it only lowers standards in every aspect of the league.

I think we should be thankful that someone like Gran Torino has taken it upon himself to audit each club and provide us with factual information on the salaries they paid, all free of charge.

the league is in trouble because the average NBA guy will get the whole amount in about a week. Like KG gets $300,000 per game. they should recruit KG just for the Finals to win

Playtime, we should combine that great plan with another: community ownership - that could never fail. Everyone could chip in $5 and vote on various decisions. The first decision could be which opposition player KG defends like a dog as a bizarre mark of disrespect.

OK, here's my 2c worth.

The new league administers a strict salary cap of $900K per club. Assuming 30 games for each team, that is $30K per game and each club gets to work out how that is divided up between its 10 players, based on no player can earn more than $5K per game, nor less than $1K per game. (We are going to a 40 minute game, so no need for the 2 development players anymore)

However, from there I can see where I will probably upset supporters of the smaller markets. Each Team can then have their players receive money from Sponsors that are not part of the salary cap! e.g. Distinctive Homes decides to kick in $150K a year, to be Ballinger's personal Sponsor and the Adelaide team decides to have Luke as one of their $5K per game players. Therefore he could earn $300K per season.

This way every team will offer the same salary as every other, but it is up to the Clubs to get their sponsors, so if, again an e.g., Adelaide can only get $500K in player sponsors, but Perth can get $800K, then players could earn more in Perth, especially the elite players.

But, it would then only be the Club's problem, because they didn't get enough Sponsorship to compete. This way the Points system could be scrapped too, if any team could get say $2M in player Sponsors, then they deserve to have the best 10 players available.

OK, I'm ready to be picked apart, because I am sure there is something I haven't thought of (especially in the 2 minutes that I thought about this for!)

how about just increasing the salary cap to a reasonable level of somewhere around the 1.2- to 1.5 mil mark and that might increase the interest of more skilled players. hence attracting more of a crowd to the games.

.. It's $1.2 mill now for the new nNBL.

Who me!- you just gave me some idea, yeah each players don't earn more than 5k per game but instead of just they find their own sponsorship the club can also give them extra jobs like going to schools, hold camps etc. while they can earn some extra dollars for every events they go to.

Who me, wasn't your grand plan already happening ?
I can recall hearing Distinctive Homes were responsible for getting Farley back the last time he was here, something along the lines of the 36ers not having enough money in the cap (or in the bank probably) to offer him, so Distinctive put in the rest. Also heard something similar regarding getting Hodge back last season, only it was someone else tipping in the money this time round.... not sure how the whole he was paid/he wasn't paid thing fit in with the second example though. :)

Hey DICKO, how many #1 priorities can a league have?

Good thinking Who Me. How r u gonna tell Larry that? Let alone people who make the decisions. I wholeheartedly agree with you though.

TC2/DICKO, they are the facts - 100%, whether you believe them or not. I could go deeper and give you player salaries but then you guys wouldn't believe me anyway!

Do it Gran Tornino... I believe you. Secretly... i love you

Love to hear the truth. :)
Go 4 it.

We had a discussion over the Easter weekend about player payments. One person put forward the example of Ballinger - getting a pretty solid salary on a multi-year deal for work that roughly works out to be 5-6 or so months plus pre-season. In the off-season, he's playing in NZ to supplement his income and the risk is that his back injury flares up and jeopardises that multi-year deal while he's not even working for the 36ers. During this period, many basketball employers are losing money so it's not as though those providing this opportunity are rolling in money while exploiting the retired-by-38 players.

One thought we had (and again, as per Who Me's above, it's likely flawed but might be worth discussion) was that NBL teams, where possible, contract players for the full 12 months and can then play them within Australia or NZ as they see fit. The 36ers might have Ballinger play in Adelaide, but then sit out the off-season to recuperate. Or they might have him play the NBL season and then sell his rights to an NZ NBL or SEABL team to recoup some of their costs.

Or, to provide more links with grassroots basketball, they might require NBL players to suit the NBL season, play the off-season in the ABL, make a number of audited appearances at junior clubs (even assistant coach a junior team) and/or even do a part-time business traineeship or similar with a corporate sponsor.

If each 36er was delegated to an ABL team in some form of points-related draft (e.g., Ballinger to last year's wooden-spooner, Schenscher to the second bottom team, down to benchies for Forestville and Norwood), it would help even up the competition, provide better opportunities for crowds to the ABL teams, and give the 36ers more involvement with SA's junior clubs? The 36ers might do this in exchange for promotion of 36ers games by junior clubs.