An expansion team just went to the GF series in their first season. And their team list was chock full of roster afterthoughts.

We'll be fine.

I think we will need an extra import to make it work. But I also think the depth of Australian basketball is only getting deeper. A lot of kids who will keep coming through college and some of them will develop into stars. They need somewhere to play. But it's all about getting that balance right between talent spread, giving opportunities, and making sure its a viable commercial product.

I agree, if the nbl want to expand into Darwin and Canberra then the league should consider another import spot. I know we have the special restricted player spot for some Asian countries but not all teams use it.

Only talent concern is the teams on the bottom like the Taipans, Breakers and Bullets. NBL need to make sure those's teams rise up so the competition is more even like the 2016/17 season.

I don’t mind which way the league goes if it’s Darwin first or Canberra, just get the market and fan interest right.

Darwin is closer to Asia which expands that market for preseason games and tourists.

Many Chinese support for the Boomers, China game. Not sure if Singapore team could work again, but the travel across the country would be too dear when fuel prices going up and not many flights available etc.

I believe there is room for more teams, a lot depending on sponsors dollars. Brisbane for example are owned by nba guys but don't want to spend much, well that’s how it looks from the outside.
I firmly believe the talent is there, again coaching can make a huge difference, just look at Tasmania.

Australia is one of the best basketball nations in the world, but has one of the smallest national leagues. We can easily accommodate more teams.

Again as the JJs proved, guys that coached properly can get to the next level or least be very solid bench guys.

Be interesting to see JJ's this year, with the pressure now to make finals I think it will be vastly more difficult than it was in their first season with little to no expectation.

Main issue is the money in regards to the league, more Aussie players would be inclined to play here if the money was better, some stick around and take pay cuts to be home

More of the top overseas guys - lingering around in Europe

Expansion with 4 Imports sounds pretty good.

"Main issue is the money in regards to the league, more Aussie players would be inclined to play here if the money was better"

With every new team there is more money on offer.

"more Aussie players would be inclined to play here if the money was better"

when I think about this question of enough local talent (AUS+NZ) to support expansion, I always wonder how many NBL+ quality local players are playing elsewhere, Europe, NBA, G-League, wherever. Anyone counted up how many teams' worth of locals are preferring overseas to NBL? I don;t follow overseas leagues so have no sense of this.

In the 1990s, virtually all the local players good enough to play NBL or overseas ended up playing NBL. These days, it seems it's turned around and the better the local player then the more likely they're playing overseas.

There are a lot more quality Aussie players now than in most of the 90s. The NBL of the 90s was fed by the tiny participation base basketball had before it boomed in the late 80s-early 90s.

Since then we've had sustained high levels of participation that produce lots of quality talent, hence our high rankings in male and female basketball.

@anonymightymouse, beg to differ, we're absolutely not the 3rd best in the world in mens division regardless of what the rankings say, better than fr and esp? No way in hell. The rankings are an indication of just how easy we have it in the regional qualifiers than anything else..put aus in europe & we'd struggle to even qualify..

I'd advise you to read up on the weightings in the FIBA ranking system, that will show you that our region is a negative when it comes to getting ranking points.

@anonymightyhouse, still doesnt change the fact that the current ranking is not a true reflection of where australia stands in the world stage, we constantly get slaughtered all the time by the french, spanish, lithunia, serbia, canada and the us, at all age group levels. Heck when was the last time we beat turkey @the junior level? We're emtirely dependent on getting easy draws to make a deeep run in major tournaments..

Over the past decade we're 17-12 at U19 and U17 level against European teams, and at senior level in that span we are 12-7. To pretend we are not one of the best nations in the world doesn't square with the facts.

"We constantly get slaughtered by [list of teams we beat at the last two major international tournaments]" is an interesting take.

" we constantly get slaughtered all the time by the french, spanish, lithunia, serbia, canada and the us"

Wha... wha.....whaaaat? lol

We've consistently beat Lithuania every time we've played them since 2014. Canada has not beaten us since 2000. We beat France one of the last two times we played them. We've only lost by 1 pont the last two times we've played Spain so hardly "slaughtered". Serbia we beat 1 out of 2 times.. that's being 'slaughtered' as well.

"We're emtirely dependent on getting easy draws to make a deeep run in major tournaments.."

Another WHAT!?!?! statement. We've won regions and then been put in pools with 3 zone champions as opposed to two. Tokyo was the first time in over 20 years that we haven't been put in a pool of death of some sort. I feel like you're speaking based entirely on emotion.

"Over the past decade we're 17-12 at U19 and U17 level against European teams, and at senior level in that span we are 12-7. To pretend we are not one of the best nations in the world doesn't square with the facts."

Extrapolate that to Boomers performances and we beat France actually 2 of the last 3 times we've played them.

"put aus in europe & we'd struggle to even qualify.."

Maybe with an NBL C team. If we brought our A Team we absolutely would qualify and the fact we've been top 4 in the past 3 tournaments is testament to that. You cant fluke your way there. Not three times in a row.

"we're absolutely not the 3rd best in the world in mens division regardless of what the rankings say"

Well how do you want to define it? We have the third best performing men's national team in the world based on a decade of solid performance. We've consistently beaten top European team since 2014. If you want to talk about depth or the standard of our domestic league then you might say that, but the fact remains we can put 12 guys together who, as a team, are world beaters in major tournaments and to take that away because we dominate Asia is weird.

I think we can say we're lucky we qualify through Asia but at the same time when we're actually in these major tournaments we dont get unfair placing. Our pools in the World Cup and Olympics have always been tough. And until 2014 and 2012 we always got the Team USA crossover boobyprize. But because we were performing so well in our pool we've not had to do that since - and we were second only to the USA in 2016 in a pool that included Serbia and France - two teams that you say consistently destroy us. In 2021 we were actually ranked the best defensive team of the entire tournament. But yeah... we get destroyed and we're garbage. Bare in mind we've done all this without arguably our best player.

Also on the Asia situation, they're not going to be easy beats for long. The China we saw on Sunday night was a much better China performance than I've seen in recent memory. Japan got slaughtered but that was their C team. The more we play against Asian teams the better they're going to get. We're going to be in a very different situation in Asia in 5-10 years.

@me, beating france twice in history suddenly makes us better than them? And when was the last time canada even fielded their nba players? , so dont even get me started on that. Besides i dont really understand your arguments at all, half of the time, you yourself constantly criticize the team, yet when someone else makes the exact same arguments , you suddenly change your tune & become extremely defensive?? Make up your mind dude.

The argument that the best players didnt attend a tournament is not valid. You placing is based of results in tournaments, we also didnt have some of our best players playing as well. If a team should be ranked higher because their top players didnt attend - your going down the fantasy league route.

Results are results, for a small population nation Australians play above average in many sports not just Basketball.

@ballman, the small population argument completely falls apart when you realise that it's because of our small population that we're able to splurge so much money on sports without a care in the world, if we had the same population, as say for instance, india, chances are that we'd be struggling just as much since we'd suddenly have way more mouths to feed and not enough riches going around to pump so much money into sports. Beyond a certain point, population can become a bane, all things considered i'd say we have an optimal population. Moderation is key remember.

"@me, beating france twice in history suddenly makes us better than them?"

Twice in history? You mean two out of the past three times? I didnt just pick out two arbitrary wins outside of dozens of losses or something. Australia has the wood on Australia 2/1 since 2000. Hardly "absolutely demolished" or whatever you said lol.

" And when was the last time canada even fielded their nba players?"

Last year. They failed to qualify. Shall we just grant them a higher standing than us due to a theoretical team they might have? They lost to the teams that we beat by the way, just so you know.

"you yourself constantly criticize the team, yet when someone else makes the exact same arguments , you suddenly change your tune & become extremely defensive?"

I don't just blindly criticize the team and pretend like their world status is unearned. Australia has been better than most of the nations that you claim "slaughter" us in the past 3 major tournaments. The only criticism I give the team is I'd like to see better preparation and I'd hope if we were in Europe more guys would put their hands up. I am very very very sure if Australia was in Europe and had the buy in that Slovenia has from its top players that we would qualify. But as Spain has recently shown, if you send out a C grade team you can lose to an unheralded team like Georgia, such is the closeness of international basketball.

So to circle back to what I believe your point is, is Australia the third best basketball nation in the world? Well on the only solid metrics we have to discern that, it would appear so. Our best national team is the third best performing national team on the planet. We have some of the highest number of NBA players of any country with more to come. We have a national league that has pushed itself into the international consciousness despite having less than half of the funding of other nations. I am sure you can atleast concede that we are pretty good.

"@ballman, the small population argument completely falls apart when you realise that it's because of our small population that we're able to splurge so much money on sports without a care in the world, if we had the same population, as say for instance, india, chances are that we'd be struggling just as much since we'd suddenly have way more mouths to feed and not enough riches going around to pump so much money into sports."


HAHAHAHAHA! What about China then? It's got nothing to do with population and everything to do with industry. Australia has a thriving natural mineral industry that is the bedrock of our economy. If we didn't have that, it wouldn't matter if we had 3 million people or 300 million. Population means a smaller potential talent pool, and basketball isn't even our most popular sport. Australia vastly overachieves in basketball and it's because there is a relatively small yet absolutely parochial following of the sport in this country.

@me, and yet slovenia with a population of 2.1 million not only placed 4th in their oly debut in basketball but also have produced luka doncic, who's on his way to become one of the greatest to ever play the game, we, on the other hand keep chrurning out glorified, overrated role players and mentally ill nutjobs( bogut, simmons) despite having 10 times the population. You can either wake up and smell the coffee or keep living in your delusional, disneyland where we're a basketball powerhouse...

26 million is a pretty sizeable population size and not small by any stretch of the imagination, not to mention the steady influx of american/european immigrants that we've been rather lucky to get over the decades. Take away wll those people and we'd be utter rubbish in every single domain let alone sports.

And a little context to that one loss to france - it was the day after the overtime game against Spain. We were up by 15 at the third quarter and clearly ran out of gas. We were also carrying injuries. Call that an excuse if you like but its just further evidence that France has not slaughtered us.

Let's move over to Lithuania - they've not beaten us since before 2014!

"ou can either wake up and smell the coffee or keep living in your delusional, disneyland where we're a basketball powerhouse..."


We beat Slovenia by the way.... LOL

Oh and we have been top four the past three tournaments. We are a basketball powerhouse. And our players being "nut jobs" doesn't negate that.

@me Hahahahaha! "its got nothing to do with the popuoation, and everything to do with the industry...."population means a smaller potential talent pool"...self contradiction much? Heck even china have produced yao ming, a freaking nba hall of famer despite team sports not really being their strength. China also particupates & medlas in way more sports than australia at the oly. Not to mention the fact that chinese immigrants alsmost entirely make up our badminton & table tennis teams. Hahahahaha. Bottomline: our sporting achievements are overrated & we'd be a laughing stock of the world without all the immigrants who do most of the heavylifting in our economy.

Just change this guy's name to disgruntledimmigrant

@me, yes,only cos doncic was playing with a hand injury ( by your own admission).

Show us on the doll where Australia hurt you

"@me, yes,only cos doncic was playing with a hand injury ( by your own admission)."

Okay so that and Australias injuries against france in 2019 cancel eachother out then. That means that it's 1 win, 1 loss but the order is reverse and now Australia wins bronze in 2019 and comfortably beat out France in the head to head.

@me, " just change the guy's name to disgruntled immigrant" aww cry me a river, facts dont care about your feelings, and might as well change your name to closetracistwhiteaustralian whilst at it...

Hahaha you want to talk about facts, all you've brought to the table is theories about who would be better than Australia in hypothetical situations. Australia has consistently been one of the best performing teams across the past 6-7 years and is therefore a basketball powerhouse. Any argument otherwise is absolutely idiotic and born of some sort of bee in thyne bonnet. As for whether immigrants make up a lot of what is successful in Australia, you're talking like Australia is the only country that takes immigrants and everyone else is a monoculture. Look at the French national team - do you think ethnically French people tend to be black? Or do you think MAYBE they were immigrants of some sort? None of your apparent points stand to any scrutiny. And yeah, Slovenia is a great basketball nation with a low population. Basketball is also Slovenia's number 1 national sport.

@me, and just so you know when i said we get slaughtered by those teams, i also meant the youth levels, surely that was obvious? But you decided to ignore that and cherry picked stats to suit your own narrative.

@me sure france also takes in immigrants, no denying that, but we on the other hand ... literally stole land & resources that wasnt even ours to begin with & continue to subjugate the original inhabitants of said land to this very day...our scale of immigration is unprecedented & cannot be compared to any other nation barring the americans & maybe the poms.

"@me, and just so you know when i said we get slaughtered by those teams, i also meant the youth levels, surely that was obvious? But you decided to ignore that and cherry picked stats to suit your own narrative."

Because youth level isnt terribly relevant now is it? Kids that are superstars at youth level often turn into nobodies, other kids have growth spurts. The end result is the men's national team. Whatever goes on before that is secondary. We've also had scratchy attendance to some of these youth tournaments with a lot of top players opting out for various reasons. but if we look past that we can say that youth performance is often not a reflection of senior performance. A few Under 19 gold medals say that much for us.


"@me sure france also takes in immigrants, no denying that, but we on the other hand ... literally stole land & resources that wasnt even ours to begin with & continue to subjugate the original inhabitants of said land to this very day...our scale of immigration is unprecedented & cannot be compared to any other nation barring the americans & maybe the poms."

This is where the bee in the bonnet is. And by the way, have a look of the history of the world. Pick a country and there were atrocities there. How any of it actually relates to a game of basketball in 2022 is beyond me.

I believe Australia is the only country in the world to play a medal game at each of the last three majors.

@me, one would think performances at the youth level are a pretty reliable yardstick in determining the quality of the talent pool ,& by extension future performances at the senior level no? I mean, there's a reason why youth tournaments are held, cos otherwise there wouldn't be a pipeline for the senior teams..

Aaron Trahair agrees.

"@me, one would think performances at the youth level are a pretty reliable yardstick in determining the quality of the talent pool ,& by extension future performances at the senior level no? I mean, there's a reason why youth tournaments are held, cos otherwise there wouldn't be a pipeline for the senior teams.."

That's great and everything except players often develop well beyond their under 16/17/19 standings. Some kids go backwards, others stop growing, some arent athletic enough to really make it as an adult. That's an issue that the entire world faces when gauging junior talent at those ages. If you want to talk pipelines you could have just as easily talked about the world renown Australian Institute of Sport, the Centre of Excellence, or the NBA global academy down here. But I am not sure what your point is, that one day we might not have the success we have now? Its like you lost ground on the argument that we're not a superpower, and now you're like "yeah, but we wont be a superpower in future?" It seems like a bit of a goalpost move.

"
I believe Australia is the only country in the world to play a medal game at each of the last three majors."

Thats true but because we qualify through Asia its irrelevant according to Ozymandis lol

Case in point - Tamuri Wigness. the guy was thought to be a gun. Stopped growing. Put in the men's league and went nowhere. This happens to kids across the world (Not just Australia Ozymandis!) and it happens often enough that it is very hard to guage a country's future fortunes by their junior performance only to say that if they're generally good now they'll probably be generally good later. And we've been around the 5-9 mark in those tournaments consistently so it's not warning signs for the future at all.

@me, i mean that was a ridiculously cherrypicked stat, this is the issue with only using 3/4 tournaments as a sample size, domination happens over decades at every age group level. That's why america are the topdogs in basketball. Its a continous process, not something that fizzles out after a few years.

Ridiculously cherry picked? Outside of USA, Spain, USSR, Lithuania, Argentina and genuine superpower teams (or former superpowers) no one has been to three medal games in a row and not sure that some of those definitely did it either. Australia has been successful and consistent. And then if you want to go out even further we've been in medal games in on and off for over 34 years - 1988, 1996, 2000, 2016, 2019, 2021. Australia just is one of the world's top basketball nations. You dont fluke that. Three medal game appearances isn't a cherry picked stat it is a very measurable level of success

Look your arguments don't stand to reason. You dont have to like or appreciate Australian basketball but don't expect to convince people who know better that it isn't respected or very very good at a global level - it absolutely is.

@me, Three medal game appearances is a very cherry picked stat no matter how you cut it. ..and all the gaps in the medal years that you mentioned literally proves my point..we're an above average team whose fortunes vary depending on the draws we get and the strengths of other competing nations. Would be really interesting to see how we cope in the future now that african & asian teams are slowly but surely starting to close the gap.

@me, case in point, india finished 5th in the recently concluded 16 asian qualifiers ( boys) and beat korea, iran and lost to japan by a single digit point margin & have a very talented young group of players coming thru their ranks.

And in the quaterfinals, Philipines pushed us to our absolute limits & as a matter of fact led us by as much as 15 points and were neck & neck until the end of the 3rd quater. The only reason we got thru was because of our size adv, and purely in terms of skill we were outplayed by every single team we were up against. The future isnt really looking all that bright. Size adv can come to our rescue only for so long.

"we're an above average team whose fortunes vary depending on the draws we get and the strengths of other competing nations"

My 'cherrry picked' stat proves you wrong. We've been one of the most successful nations on the planet for the past 6 years - that is an undeniable fact. Proven by the fact we got to the medal rounds every time and no one else did!

And the draws and competing nations all changed over those tournaments. I am not sure how you can say just 'above average'. Like who else do you class as above average just so we can get a guage on what kind of company you compare us to?

@me, well in a sport where only 10-15 teams are really competitive @ any given time, i'd say we're pretty bang avg gien we've only medalled at the olympics once in our entire history. Truth is we've had an enormous headstart over most developing nations..

Ok so 10-15 nations are 'average'? Hundreds of countries play basketball. And yeah weve only medalled once, but does the fact we were 1 point and a bad call away in 2016 mean nothing? Or the fact we knocked on that door again in 2019? We've been consistently extremely competitive and knocked on the medal door three times in a row - something very few nations can say. I dont understand how that is cherry picked? Is the fact we had the best defense in Tokyo also cherry picked? We had statistically the best offense in Rio. I mean you do have to ignore huge swaths of information to pretend we are average.

@me " like who else do you class as above average just so we can get a gauge on what kind of company you compare us to- i'm pretty sure you know the answer to that question yourself..

This whole thing is futile. If you're not able to concede the consistent success and competitiveness of the Boomers over the past 6 years, acting like it's all a miraculous fluke, then you really are blinded by ideology above facts and reason. I bet I could walk up to an NBA scout, NBA boardroom or anywhere else and ask who the top basketball nations are and they'd all say Australia among their answers.

@me, and the quality of the canadians in the nba is far superior to our own, so i can also use that info to argue that canada is a much better basketball team than australia & that their poor performances at major tournaments could simply be put down to the fact that all their star players are almost always busy with their nba comittments & simply don't get to spend enough time with each other to build chemistry for intl tournaments...so yes, those stats are cherry picked too..

@me, yes but they would also tell you that statistically australians are some of the the worst overseas players in the nba in the same vein, which would also be true.

The Nets just gave Patty Mills 15 mill to be a useless chucker then. Joe Ingles is all time 3 point scorer in jazz history because he sucks. Andrew Bogut was called back to GSW after his NBL stint as a joke. Josh Giddey was the youngest player to get triple doubles for some other miraculous reason. I mean you really do have to create a whole bunch of unlikely miracles for Australian basketball to be average or suck.

As far as FIBA rankings go, they are calculated on an 8 year cycle. So we have been the 3rd best country over that period. And the calculations are based off individual games, rather than tournament finishes.

We are not talking about the past 20+ years, but 8. Recent enough to be back up ME's claim that we are a powerhouse.

Facts

So off individual games AND tournament finishes we are the 3rd best team in the world over the past 8 years -

aka a basketball powerhouse

Thank you statman. The prosecution rests.

@me, mills was very lucky that he was part of the spurs all these years, any other team and he'd been out of the nba long back, he doesnt really bring much to the table apart from microwave shooting off the bench and his playmaking is utterly useless against any team with long . Athletic defenders ( ironically the same issue which taimuri wigness has) , so not why you're making him out to be steph curry, the nets offered him that sum for his veteran lockroom presence mostly ( in other words cheerleading). I realistically don't see giddey sticking around for long in okc now that they've acquired chet & dieng, both of whom are far better long term prospects and have a more versatile skillset, bogut severely underperformed for someone who was drafted as the 1st pick, exum's out of the league already, simmons will out in the next yr or 2, the 76ers are actively trying to get rid of thybulle too, no idea what happens with green...i mean you really have to create a whole bunch of scenarios to make us worldclass...what a joke.

@statman84, in those 8 years we only got one medal that too cos a star player of the opponent team was playing thru an injury...hardly sounds like a basketball powehouse to me..

@ststman84, also we certainly werent number 3 throughout the entire 8 yr cycle, the rankings were updated last yr after the oly.

Why so salty Ozzy? Tall poppy syndrome

Yeah I've actually never seen a performance like this before. lol.

If you consider the last 2 Olympics plus the World Cup in between, that's two 4ths and a third.

Whomever looks at those results and concludes that Australia is less than a top 4 proposition from that record is taking the piss.

Looking forward, France is a scary proposition with the sheer amount of talent coming through, they should establish themselves as a top 2 side that could knock a full strength USA side off. Will they be at that point by Paris 2024? Probably not. Timing would suggest closer to 2028.

Canada are a weird one because nobody ever knows what we are going to get with them. If they had their full team sure they’d potentially be a powerhouse but for whatever reason they’ve never had their full team or got the job done.

We wouldn’t consider NZs strength on the basis of Steve Adams because he never plays for them, same needs to apply for Canada really.

Simmons is a little different as he nominates and later withdraws, but at this rate I wouldn’t blame anyone considering a full strength Aussie side Simmons-less.

With that said, Australia has a strong future, it just won’t be one with that guaranteed scoring leader like Mills or the scenario of so many quality players willingly play for Australia together so regularly like we had with Mills/Delly/Ingles/Bogut/Baynes.

Looking forward, the team had the talent and depth in a way, just perhaps not the balance.

The biggest issues I see moving forward are

- 3 point shooting at guard and wing spots
- a scorer after Mills
- a big brick type big man

We've got the point guard play making position covered. We have length and athleticism at the wings. Defensively we're going to remain elite. Ina lot of ways we're going to the opposite make up to all the teams we've had before. The issues raised can be fixed or alleviated but they are considerations.

"Whomever looks at those results and concludes that Australia is less than a top 4 proposition from that record is taking the piss."

It would be like saying the '98 Chicago Bulls werent a championship calibre team. I mean Australia has done it 3 times in a row now. How much more do you need to see?

Oh looky here - our junior team lead Argentina 39-15 right now as we speak. By golly Australian basketball sucks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkmK4dKjr7w

This topic is going nuts lol. Lots of talk the talk, let's just wait till the Boomers walk the walk first.

Does anyone know when the Asia Cup squad will be announced?

They've walked the walk for eight years straight. lol

Just change this guy's name to disgruntledimmigrant

last month*

(It was actually the Dyson Daniels thread.)

How are the Philippines teams doing at the FIBAU17 World Cup?

@perthworld, no idea what you're on about here looks like you've got the wrong person..

@me, come and talk when our glorious junior team wins against the likes of fr, us, canada, spain, serbia etc .oh wait, they never have & never will...this arg team would have lost to the filipinos in the asian qualifiers, that's how shit they're are.

@really, they did rather well actually, gave the crocs a run for their money..defo improved by leaps and bounds..

@me, btw can you be a good little boy and and tell me where we finished in the u19 world cup in 2021?

Seems to be the same posting style too.

https://www.hoops.com.au/forum/49992-luke-travers-declares-for-nba-draft/

@NotOzzymandis

So they qualified then? Beating out other FIBAasia teams?

@perthworld, "obvious bitter filipino is obvious"
the only thing that seems to be obvious here is that you have a hate boner for the filipinos, looks like a rich, goodlooking , successful filipo dude stole your girlfriend and you're now taking out all your frustration on them..

@zodiac, again, no idea..whatever makes you sleep at night i suppose..

@really, nope, but i think they're pretty close to cracking it, the only real area where they're lacking in , is size ( tbf that's all asian teams to be honest). Really impressed with their skill tho, bodes well for the game going forward. Also without zikarsky, this particular team doesn't get out of asia. He's been carrying us solo.

@NotOzzymandis

Surely you haven't seen the India and China, teams.

And pretty sure you don't get to say 'Us' when you are clearly not Australian.

@really, india literally finished 5th dude, really commendable feat.
"And pretty sure you get to say us when you're clearly not australian"
And exactly who the hell are you to decide my nationlity? So criticizing our basketball team automatically makes me a foreigner, how do i know you're an aussie ? Got any proof?

@really, bet you're just a troll account created by ME..won't be suprised if that's indeed the case...

@NotOzzymandis

But they were tall.

@perthworld, no idea what you're on about here looks like you've got the wrong person..

@perthworld, again, not me, you really need to let go of your obsession with natrndra and filipinos..

To get back to the original premise, it's not so much about talent, it's about profitability of the nbl clubs.
Can the owners make enough money out of basketball to pay players enough so they will play in nbl rather than overseas?
As overseas league grow I doubt this. While nbl is a legit pathway to nba it has serious and growing competition.
College pathway previously had no option to earn money it does now.
G-league as Dyson daniels showed is a preferred pathway
In addition Asian leagues have huge economies and will have the ability to throw much more money at players than nbl 1 ever will.
So I suspect if you expand and start having games with audiences/tv ratings which are poor it will drag the league down. How many people are going to watch a Darwin vs Canberra game?
If you use Tasmania as an example of success, it might be worthwhile waiting. The last team to do what they did as a new club was the Geelong Supercats and where are they now?
And I wanted to add whoever said that basketball had low participation rates back in 80s/90s is plain wrong. Participation in australia at grass roots has always been strong. It just didn't equate to a good national competition

The FIBA rankings require you to be consistent over the 8 year cycle. The fact that we have been stronger in the back end of the current cycle just means that as the older results "fall off", our points will only rise.

Thanks for playing Ozzy.

BTW- who hurt you?

Juniors finished 4th in 2013 and 10th in 2021. Neither of these finishes concern or surprise me. Not sure why the obsession with the juniors when the men's team is doing so well. Talk about cherry picking!

Meanwhile in the U17s Australia will face off against Lebanon for a spot in the top eight, which they'd be heavily favoured to win. So who knows from there? After that, Ozymadis might need to move goal posts again if this team ends up going somewhere.

@ME - getting back on topic lol, I reckon we can accommodate more teams in the NBL. 12 definitely, 14 maybe (depending on the circumstances, but I trust in LK and JL with their expansion plans).

You would think 16 would be the ceiling, but who knows for sure when there as possible plans for Darwin and all this talk of further expansion into NZ?

I am all for balance. To get Aussies back to the NBL we need more teams so more teams can pay more players more marquee money. To develop our players we need positions for them to fill. But at the same time there is a certain standard the league should want to uphold and there are considerations around the eye test of the product. This is why I am for small expansion and the further relaxing of import rules. It has to be done slowly or we could end up with a glorified NBL1 on our hands. Id be angling for 12 teams, 3-4 imports, 1 next star, 1-2 Asian players (maybe up it to 2) and see how that looks for a couple of years. But the other concern is there are definitely some bums out there who keep gigs well past their primes, and yet because theyre reliable at doing what theyre doing, they stay and the next kid doesn't get a shot. That is why we probably do need a bit of an expansion.

Surely we need the NBL to look like an Australian league. If teams start lining up with 3 - 4 Americans ( I can remember back when 36ers had 3 imports plus 2 - 3 naturalised Americans) , plus an American next start and possibly an Asian "prospect" we end up with maybe 4 Aussies playing meaningful minutes or filling development player roles.

I think 3 Imports is definitley enough, but they should be really good, not the best 7th man in the comp. Most often the "nest stars" should be playing the Terance Ferguson type minutes unless they are a Giddey or a Ball.
More teams should mean more and better Aussies playing in our league.

How it is now is fine, 3 imports, next star, asian player available to teams that want/are able to fill them. Add one expansion team at a time, make sure they have good backing so they can attract good talent.

@me, you're either stupid or pretending to be one if you think juniors don't matter. The likes of giddey, dyson and proctor all come up thru the juniors, every senior player was once a junior. so yea, my dear naive sweet little child, junior results absolutely matter in the grand scheme of things. The juniors are where development happens, you can't develop a basketball player after a certain age. Growth spurts don't mean shit if the skills aren't already there. Patty has been so good for us not because he's 6'10, but because he has strong fundamentals. you keep raving about our olympic bronze medal like we didnt get a laughably easy draw in the group stage followed by an aging, severely weakened argentina in the quaters and lost to literally the first strong team we faced in the semis ( america) . You can turn keep turning a blind eye to our issues all that you want, Doesnt change the fact that they don't exist just because you don't want to acknowledge them.


"Juniors finished 4th in 2013 and 10th in 2021. Neither of these finishes concern or surprise me"- well, it absolutely should concern you, as a matter of fact it should be ringing alarm bells in your head if it isn't already, this goes to show just how much we've fallen over the "last 8 yr period ironically"...if the quality of the juniors keep steadily dropping, ultimately that'll start to reflect in the quality of the seniors squads moving forrward unless you think senior players are aliens who fall down from the sky.

Yeah Geelong !!! Venue always been the issue, council owned and needs a decent update.

Ozzymandis it doesnt matter so much because past junior success has not equalled senior success and past junior failure has not meant senior failure. As I said, senior teams are the amalgamation of the best of all men, not just under certain age groups, and as such U17 could have a severe weakness that is totally taken care of by slightly older players once theyre all adults. You've got Giddey for instance for the next decade so the impetus for upcoming point guards to be so good isnt quite as strong as it might be. So you could have teams losing for poor guard play, and then the guards we have no mesh with them for the Boomers and it is no longer a problem. That should make logical sense. Lets not forget the entirely wasted (and yes I will be critical here) gold medal junior team of 1997 (I believe it was), where no real noteable Boomers outcomes came from it. Aaron Trahair was to be the next Andrew Gaze - didnt happen. Juniors have to be taken in context and with a pinch of salt. A lot of junior players turn into burger flippers. A lot of guys who didnt make junior rep teams go on to play top level pro ball. it is NOT the be all end all.