Anonymous
Years ago
NBL "incapable" of making decisions: Smith
A new article was released this morning from Olgun Uluc at Fox Sports, featuring more comments from Sydney Kings owner, Paul Smith.
It sounds to me like the NBL did make a decision - which was that it would continue on with the series and that the Kings didn't like that. They were hoping the league would cancel the series.
Smith continues to mention that there was an agreement for there to be no winner if the series was incomplete. I find that one strange, as I can't see how both teams would agree to that as it would essentially create a "get out of jail free card" if one of the teams wasn't happy with how things were going.
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"There was no sense that we were asking the NBL to make a judgment; the NBL was incapable of making a decision," Smith said. “There were no NBL executives in Perth. We were functioning in a void. This is a teleconference. There wasn't even policy on the run, it wasn’t even decision-making on the run; it was just 'do something’ on the run. That’s what it became.”
“In fact, I offered that opportunity to the NBL,” Smith said, when asked if he hoped the NBL would make the decision to cancel the series, before they withdrew.
“I said, look, leave us out of it. We’re not interested in grandstanding here; all we’re interested in is our player welfare. The league refused that, and said that they were gonna come out with an announcement that reflected the fact that the Sydney Kings withdrew.
“We were forced to come out, as a result, and I told the league that we would have to defend our players in a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, if that was the case.”
