would love to see that!

He plays for money! Unless he loves Rodney O a lot & money is no longer an issue to him it would b great 4 our league. I still love his game!

Guy can play no doubt and would put bums on seats

Would be simply awesome for not only the Kings, but for the profiel of the NBL as well. As Mystro said, it would put a hell of a lot of bums on seats and increase the TV audience as well.

Now if only AI would agree to a contract that would fit him into the NBL's salary cap...hmmmm

If money is not going to be an issue, this will be awesome for our league and he'll definitely help fill the venues.

Hell Yeh! i was wondering this all along saying it would be awesome to have some superstars come into the league but we dont have the salaries to go with it. promotion wise it would be huge! fingers crossed.

I would like to see it happen, just in case he averages 11/3/5 and Paul's thoughts on the strength of the NBL are vindicated!

lower the salary cap, allow 1 marquee player per team outside the cap

I doubt he would have any idea how little he would get paid.

Dangermouse, if you lower the salary cap, your average Australian player's salary drops. Most of those guys are on less than 100k now - pay them less and see how many want to stay around.

On another note, the marquee player thing barely works in my view. In a-league, which i loosely follow, I could not name you a single marquee player this year. I am sure the football community can name their overseas players, but not all of those are marquee players.

If each team has their top player outside the cap, if anything the rest of the teams salaries could rise, depending how much reduce the cap by. Teams that can afford a 'marquee' player then have room to land a big fish if they can. We could potentially bring back one of our best Aussies playing in Europe.

Scoring some big names would be great for the league, and doesnt necessarily have to impact other players. Teams that don't want to spend more, can just leave their top payed player outside the cap.

Perhaps a possibility is to reduce the salary cap by the average import salary payment and take 10 points off of the limit. Allow a second import with unrestricted rules. For those teams operating on a budget, they could still have a second import around the current $$ amount but those that could afford more, the opportunity would be there.

It said that he wants to do after his 2 year contract ends in Turkey, so he'd be 37 when that happens. Is he the automatic MVP favourite if he comes over at 37? Obviously he's not the player he was 10 years ago (one of the best handful of players on the planet) but would he still have enough to dominate out league?

You'd have to think he'd be an upgrade on Gary Ervin who's probably the favourite for this year's MVP, but what if he's not?

maybe introduce some kind of new cap rule about ex-NBA All stars granting some kind of exception from cap with government funding huh.

Know this is easier said then done but hey, imagine what this can do for ball.

why do we have a salary cap AND a points system???

Don't the both do the same thing in reality?

I think teams should be more creative with the use and payment of imports...

* wait until a 1/3 of the season is gone then sign an import
* only get 1 import and spend twice as much
* any other ideas?

I like the train of thought there LA Boy, would be a hard sell, but might be something to work with there.

Try and convince the poli's that they might be able to make a new friend ala Media Mike and his buddy Lance.

The problem if you change the salary cap rule is that we reintroduce teams winning championships then collapsing before the start of the new season. not sure im so fond of that. however if the league improves and gets bigger and makes money then id be all in favour of pushing that cap up.

DJ Rod, salaries are hard to monitor. which is why the point system is there too. Salary is one thing but then there are bonuses that clubs can give which comes out of there pocket but essentially isnt part of the 'salary' and it drives clubs broke. Look at the Storm it took them too long to figure that out. where as if they had a points system and all those guys are superstars they wouldnt have been allowed to keep them because they would have breached the points system.

With the quality of alot of the NBL's imports this season, it wouldnt be a bad idea to go 1 import and spend up big on someone top notch.

As good as it would be for putting bums on seats, why would you change all the rules regarding salary and points cap just so Sydney can get an old and by that time he's ready to come down under, washed up ex NBA player. After all the financial uncertainty of a lot of the Teams in the league I would just stick to the current setup until all the Teams are in a financial position to change the cap ect.

Rod, can't teams already do those things now?

I don't think we stand to get real marquee names until they're on their last legs. We might get higher-calibre players (Donta Smith, Ere, etc) but those aren't quite the types to get blanket media coverage.

Mystro for the simple fact of improving this league financially. I think its a good marketing idea!

Definitely a great marketing idea. but i agree that we shouldnt change our rules so we can get him. Either take the pay cut and enjoy being in a english speaking country with a starting role or dont play. lets be honest if Iverson is smart which i dont know if he is or isnt he should have a tonne of money from the NBA and more recently Turkey, yeh he would take a pay cut in the NBL but is it really that hard to live off 200K? if he doesnt like the pay then i say dont let him play. we dont want teams going bust for an old superstar.

Did he really say that on twitter? He's been pretty quiet on there.

Or was this lack of investigation from the paper - simply seeing someones fake post on Kings facebook?

Kev, as soon as I read the article I went straight to his Twitter page on the was no mention on there about Sydney. Saying that they might have been on there and since as deleted them as not to offend his current team.

Interesting. Iverson and Ogilvy are averaging about the same number of points on that team.

King james, I am all for the league going forward but not at the expense of teams with smaller fan bases.
I love the fact that the Teams from the big cities ie Melbourne and Sydney are bottom of the table currently.

BRING IT !

To me that article says he wants to come to Australia, and Sydney is the only city he could think of when questioned about it.

So that we can just have two maybe 3 rich teams from the big cities with stacked as teams that no other smaller city could afford win 1-2 titles before going belly up and taking everyone else with them as all the smaller teams will have to run budgets that they really can't afford to be almost competitive, yup sounds like an awesome long term strategy to improve basketball. then we are back to a year or two ago minus the washed up old NBA players.
If you are that desperate to watch washed up old NBA guys book a flight to China and save the NBL a heap of hassle and cash

all good for the game down under but inclusion to national team

Would he be worth the expense though? Would he perform, or would he be average like he is in Turkey? How long would he hang around for? What happens when he is gone?

For the right price it would be good, but it is not worth risking a team's viability by spending big on someone who might not bring much of a return.

The idea of spending big on one import might make sense, but if you can get two good Aussies or one good Aussie and one good import for the same money as one 'marquee player', your team will be better so I am not sure too many clubs will do it (in fact, none do).

When you consider international style basketball, Kirk Penney is one of the best going around, so you will struggle to get a player much better than him no matter how much you spend.

For the right price, someone like Iverson would be good - for millions it is not even worth considering.

$500K is a lot for someone who might not perform. I would say $500K with government assistence, not that the debt ridden NSW govt would be likely to help, surely?

Would love to see Iverson come here - and get torn up.

Roll out the red carpet, send someone over to see him, do everything you can to get him into this league.

It would be phenomenal for all involved.

But you can't bump the rules.

The risk would be that he brings 10-12 PPG, the fanfare evaporates, the incoming fans bail after a few games, and Iverson trudges on miserably to another league. But would that damage the NBL?

"NBL didn't do enough to keep him happy."

"NBL can only get washed-up has-beens."

I remember a bit of the latter when Price came out and when the Rodman rumours were going around.

I doubt it. Unless he tears it up, the novelty factor (and therefore crowds) will evaporate very quickly, and I just can't see him being that dominant.
The first time he plays Perth, Marto & Robbo will hold him to 3/17 shooting and 8 turnovers, then he'll go play Townsville and Hinder will tunnel him & break is wrist, and suddenly the massive investment ain't providing much return.

Putting aside the fact that this seems to just be a hoax to generate publicity and divert attention away from Sydney's underperforming management & coaching, this is a bad idea anyway IMO.

Would BA pay Iversons salary, knowing what he could bring to the league?

Perhaps in return for rating him a 12 for player points so the Kings dont have such an advantage?

I would think BA would do anything they could to get this kind of exposure.

National TV news ran the new Iversonism story across the screen from 4.30pm to 5.30pm -
'NBL - NBA legend Allen Iverson wants to play for the Sydney Kings.'

The only question I have...



Who the hell is BEBE???

Would be cool to have AI here, but only if he can still ball enough to impress the casual fan. If he comes over and plays like another crap import, potential new fans will quickly lose interest, the 5 mins of great NBL exposure will fade and the league will not benefit at all.

Oh wise and all knowing Anon,obsession with smaller market teams, I'm actually a Breakers fan which has one of the larger markets in the NBL and is one of the most financially stable organizations in the league. These "smaller" market teams are very important to the success of the NBL.
Wow imagine looking on NBA.com and seeing Australia mentioned, that alone will bring sellout crowds to NBL games lol.

Breakers arguably receive the biggest exposure of all NBL clubs - with potential market of 4 mill, they are at least very close to being a big market team. No other team has brought their own tv deal.

thank you paul, rest my case know it all

Sorry Know it all Anon, where are the Kings and where are the Breakers on the table? The Kings have less wins than the Breakers have losses and everyone has to watch Sydney suck every week on T.V, that's awesome for the sport huh. next.........

Has Daniel Eade got something right about this?

http://www.backpagelead.com.au/basketball/3380-iversons-ludicrous-nbl-hoax

Kings still suck tho huh Anon Troll

where in this thread did I say that NZ was a bigger market than sydney? No where, I said that "NZ was one of the bigger markets in the NBL" and then I started mocking the Kings for being crap, I would say that Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and NZ would be the bigger markets in no particular order(have no idea about Australian Cities Populations).
dyfunct?








oh and Cool Story Bro.............

Cool Story, any cliff notes?

I doubt if Iverson would be cleared by immigrationm due to his numerous dealings with the law in the States.

Hawks essentially have a young affordable Iverson in Ervin

Rodney O says he's met Iverson all of once. Daily Telegraph (the source story) say they saw the non-existent tweets mentioned on an ESPN story - but where? Ogilvy (playing with Iverson in Turkey) said he was with Iverson when AI read about the article and said he never said anything of the sort about playing in Sydney.

Daily Telegraph, making stuff up?

Anon=Troll

If you check the NBA website, Iverson did his ankle in the other night and is getting an MRI later this week.

If the ankle turns out to be done, then I doubt you'll see him anywhere; don't think his body can keep up with stresses put on during the game anymore.

Anon, no truth to the story. If you assume $1m extra cost for him to play, 15 home games, $20/ticket, you'd need 3,000+ extra fans per game for every game to cover the cost.