Why do South Australian continually push for 1 import??? No other place in the world plays with 1 import. Imports are there to help the standard of the league whether they are american or from elswhere. Our problem has been of late that the $AUD sucks compared to the rest of the world so no decent player wants to come out for $80,000 US. If our dollar was better we would get better players.

im a qlder mate, live on on gold coast, born and bred blaze fan.

so its not just south australians lol.

A born and bred Blaze fan? How old are you?

What about "Will there be an NBL this year" first?

Tinka im sorry to hear that you are a Blaze fan, im sure with the correct support network, you can make a full recovery haha

MUST be 2 imports, most fans love the idea of seeing the new imports perform, both good or bad, gerates hype and like said before, will help with the standard of play.

someone mentioned this to me recently and after thinking about it for a while, the idea got better and better.

Townsville should run with an all Aussie lineup. The team would really be seen as a hard working, grind it out team which matches the city. The fans would really get behind the idea... places like Wollongong and especially Adelaide could do it as well.

Imagine the 36ers with an all aussie team including 6 or 7 players from SA???

Can someone make a team up to see what it would look like?

I could only guess at:

Ingles
Forman
Holmes
Schensher
Hill
Ronaldson
Rogers
Boodnikoff

DJ Rod, when the 36ers first got Hodge, word spread and the crowds grew. Going without an import can be an interesting tactic (deprives other teams of another quality player), but I don't think it's always the way to go for crowds at all.

id like to see some teams try and get some big name imports to help grow interest in the game. like the soccer team did with that romario, get a has been big name to play as an import. try and get a former all-star if possible, even having mark price as a coach generated a bit of interest.

You cant get big name imports with Chook poo money. The only reason Dragons got Smith was because he lost his China gig to Bonzi Wells and had to go somehwere.

As long as we have a small cap and the $AUD is shithouse we wont get goog imports. If you want the marquee player exemption like soccer say goodbye to the league inside 2 seasons. Teams will lose bucket loads and there will be an EVEN bigger gap between the HAVES and the HAVE NOTS that we have already seen previously.

the dragons got mark price to coach a few years back, i dont see it as impossible. i feel there are probably a few former nba players who are not good enough anymore to even make european leagues or asian leagues. apparently shawn kemp is playing at almost 40

Go watch the ABL if you want to watch Aussies play. The National League is not the place for Non-imports. hell even Netball has international players.

You could tell he is a Blaze fan by the way he ended his post with "thoughts?"

a league without imports will suck. might as well watch abl like seb said.

good point Isaac

and certainly it has been a major boost for Townsville to have Williams as a marketing focus!

would shawn kemps walking frame fill the other import spot?

bring in the old ancient legend Dominique Wilkins !!

Dennis Rodman might want ta check out the Aussie babes

with 7 teams 1 import should be enough because theres enough aussie talent goin around. If 2 are allowed then a team should be allowed to get 1 and therefore make the player exempt from salary cap.

Bring on Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason to a team. They'd bring plenty of muscle and rebounds to any team.

From what i remember though didnt Mark Price get "fired" after 8 games?

Shows how much the Australian $ can buy...

And Hodge took your money and pissed off early.

Starvin Marvin the A-League havea Marquee player outside the salary cap and its sending most teams broke. SEN reported today all teams posted significant loses last season.

It's a good point that Sebastian brings up. THe A-League teams are going no where financially, lucky for them though the league administration knows what they are doing. Just shows what a little bit of professionalism can do! I challenge anyone on here to name all the teams from the last NSL season...and know look at the A-Leauge! Sure not everyone could name all the teams BUT the awareness IS there!

Anonymous #235747 : Ummmmm so what if Rod is biased towards Townsville he doesnt try to hide the fact he supports them.

I post a lot and quite often mention the Blaze, could be that I live on the Gold Coast and support the Blaze, again so what?

If you've got nothing better to post than negative crap about others then why waste your time?

Anon, I hope for your sake that you're trolling... The guy lives and works in Townsville, including working for the Crocs. Of course that's his point of reference!

You might notice that many 36ers fans on here make reference to the 36ers when they post too.

I agree anon...everyone is also way to bias towards the sixers on here too! :P

jks jks

Shawn Kemp bankrupt now! Smoked too much cocaine. We actually considered bringing him over for a 5 day ball camp but didn't want him to teach kids smoke cocaine instead.

I don't think imports will be a good idea this season if there is a league. I personally don't think fans who'll follow the league for coming up season will follow because of the imports but more to following their team. And plus, not sure about other teams but in Melbourne imports wasn't the one with all the attention anyway. People were there to watch the game for the sake of it (from my understanding).

But if a player is exepmt from salary cap can't teams play them the way they already do when they pay players under the table i.e. get a sponsor to 'employ' them. Therefore the team doesnt lose much money and someone interested in basketball employs the player to make up the extra cash required.

I think that something the nNBL should try to do is release the leash on some of the things players can say to the media...have a Jason Akermanis type player talking trash to the media about how so and so is a dirty player

Did you hear the Adelaide United guys talk to the media in their interview...they were so honest it was great to hear what they really thought

Unfortunately we don't want players to be robots in the media but when one or two speak their mind we jump on them...

Hammers been doing that a 20 years!

Did I name a team of players from Townsville?

Imports aren't why i go to games but they def make it a bit better to watch. NZ only had Rickett last year but CJ, Penney, Foreman and the Bear made up for that easily. I'm all for 1 or 2 import spots to liven up the game and lift the quality of basketball.

You don't want to be introducing salary cap exemptions for imports. That is the exact type of crazy sh!t that has brought the NBL to the point it is now, with owners paying well and truly over what they can afford through back room deals etc for quality players.

Lets get financial control back in the league before we start splashing cash willy nilly.