Yeh agreed about Carfino.

I also reckon it's time for import restrictions to change, include Asians and southern hemisphere born players as non-imports and allow teams to have 1 import (american or euro) and have their excess salary go over the cap provided they only get 1 import.

Also reckon there should be an under 24 Aussie team based in canberra and once players are of age, they are able to be recruited by the rest of the teams.

Carfino has slipped a bit this year. Gaze is the jewel of the NBL.

On POTW, obviously I thought Ervin was under-mentioned, but it's just a small thing and something for us obsessive fans to pull up on. Not going to decide the fate of the league.

I think the NBL is trundling along OK - not perfectly, but at least doing some things consistently, other things better than before.

As for how they can get better - better support for historical statistics would be good.

You could lift the points cap .
That would make the NBL better.

Like Curtley's ideas. I like the idea of a marquee player - ex NBA player to generate interest - Iverson, Wells, Marbury, Rodman a few years ago.

As much as I'd like to remove the points system it keeps the comp even and seems which assist with teams sticking to within the cap.

Former players like Gaze, Maher to be involved more with programs, promotion etc.

Make it 75points

I think something that is hurting the NBL is that, quite simply, the quality of basketball being played isn't as good as it used to be.

When the NBL was struggling in the early to mid 2000's a lot of writers and commentators stated that the product was just as good as it was when the NBL was booming in the 1990’s. I think that was true.

Unfortunately the quality of the product over the last 5 years simply isn’t as good as it used to be. I can’t help but think that a major reason for this is the large amount of Australian talent that doesn’t play in the NBL. I don’t think there has been a point in time when more Australian basketball talent was playing overseas than it currently is.

Losing players to the NBA is something that nothing can be done about. But what about players playing in Europe? I know that the NBL cannot compete with European salaries but I have two questions -

1) Is there any way that the NBL could be scheduled around the European leagues?
2) If so, do you think Australian players would play in the NBL during the European off-season as a chance to earn two incomes?

Officiating.

Tweet Tweet,
The question is would the European clubs allow their players, such as Ingles to come and play in the NBL in their off-season?
I think you would find that not many teams, especially Ingles' team (FC Barcelona) would not let their players play in the off-season:

-Risk of injury
-If they play in the NBL, they will be playing 35+ mins therefore fatigue and burnout can come into play.
-Its impossible to split the NBL and Euro comps evenly into 6 month periods(The Euro league is not going to accomdate for some minor league like the NBL and change the start dates of the season), there is going to be overlaps hence players like Ingles would probably miss Euro commitments such as training camp=potentially could fall out of favour with team and decreased mins

@tweet tweet personally i dont think the aussie content has never been better. The imports arent the draw cards they used to be and there isnt an import this season sans Homocide that i would consider a bum in seat import.

Keep in mind that we had a number of players comeback from Europe this NBL season

Knight
Loughton
Majok
Neville
Helliwell
Dickel have all played this season after being in Europe

Back in the day there was only a handful of aussies good enough to go euro were as now most starters could get a gig in Europe.

48 minute games for starters .....

Could OneHd get an iconic american commentator to come over here for a few weeks and train up some good, ex players as commentators. I am sick of Carfino, he is useless whilst i love the american style of commentary!

i am on the record already here saying how much better i view the 40 minute game. I cannot see that changing back to 48 would help make the NBL better at all.

regarding the "no one will ever hit 50 in a game again line" so what? Even under the 48 minute game it rarely happened, and when it did, it made a media splash for 3 days and went again. Its not going to give you lasting coverage.

I wonder how Casey Frank would go paired with Gaze. He's been pretty likeable during Breakers commentary.

Could there be two seperate seasons, whereby one was more euroleague style, perhaps condensed with groups of 4? Working around the euroleague is key. Ingles, Newley and Nielsen should have something to do with the NBL, even if they represent Australia at some stage during the season.

Enjoyed Casey Frank tonite. Very,very good.
Carfino talks about the time the doorknob broke
while there's play going on.

It annoys me how Carfino always refers to the "ladies" and he's not talking about the WNBL.

Hey Steve, if you want to bag on about all the ladies you pulled while your were a player then write a book dude!!!!

Perhaps the lack of sales will highlight just how much we don't care about the "ladies" and how we prefer insightful basketball commentary

Scoring!
Seriously how can any National Basketball comp be taken seriously (even in its own country) when in so many games the combined score is less than a single team scores in other comps?
2) Don't mess with rules, 8min less in a game? Are the NBL concerned attention spans of younger viwers can't handle a full game?
The truely dreadful and embarrassing "High Stakes Hoops" comp last year could have turned many Australian free-to-air viewers off the local product who may have been confused by the team names, point system and empty stadium

The 40 minute comp is in line with FIBA competitions around the world. Not everyone loves it, but that's why it's been done.

High Stakes Hoops was a private venture largely unrelated to the NBL. The NBL couldn't prevent it from going ahead.