Do people in the states know there is a comp in oz?

Dusty said in his interview that he didn't know we had a comp down under. How common is that thought?

Do Basketball Australia get involved and promote the Kings to challenge some quality NBA, European, style teams. I say the Kings because of the "3 straight" that could be attatched to them.

What happened to the championship thing with NBA, NBL champs etc that Adelaide and Perth competed in?

as alot of you guys have probably done when i played in the states i was surprised that not many people knew we even played basketball in australia

I believe under NCAA rule, college teams can only tour overseas every 4 years. A lot of teams choose to go to Europe. I'm not sure why they resrict college teams touring overseas. Since that 'Zona tour was in 2002, maybe we can hope to see them back in 2006? I know they also toured here in '96 (I think...) when they had Mike Bibby, Miles Simon, Michael Dickerson, Jason Terry etc. That group went on to win the NCAA title in '97.

BSA could send letters to every college team inviting them down to play here. Elite teams could play an ABA All-Star roster or young Sixers squad without imports. Lower grade teams could come and play against local clubs or similar.

Get the NBL involved and make it a national tour, etc. I'd definitely go and see a Sixers or ABA team play against visiting squads.

Agreed. The atmosphere for the Sturt vs Arizona game was great & I'm sure the basketball public would support games against touring Div 1 college teams.

Blazer, if my memory serves me rightly, it was the McDonalds Cup. Had teams from all around the world. Perth played against the Houston Rockets one year and one aging player by the name of "The Alabama Slammer from Peachtree Alabama" put in some blinding dunks against the Rockets.

Aaaaah, the good times. David Stern said he'd make it into a permanent fixture. I guess he got distracted by the dress code .....

Instead of the nbl blitz would a preseason comp with a northern and southern comp with a few college teams and maybe a couple of asian teams in work with timing of season and ncaa rules on teams trainig. Might even be able to help build profile in asia!!!

Blazer & Moses,
The NBA Challenge happens next year in Cologne.

http://www.nba.com/europelive/euro_map.html

76ers vs Suns and Euro Champs vs Euro R/up. The next night the winners and losers play each other. Since I live there I am very happy. An Australien team (not the Kings) would be nice.

A couple of things have affected College teams coming here. One is that the NBL has moved to summer so for a large part the season collide. Also, the demise of Victorian NBL sides has hurt - one upon a time a NCAA d1 team could come to melbourne and play 4-5 NBL quality sides and then some Seabl sides as well. Most of the time they were in town while the wednesday night VBA champs were on and it was at a time when Coaches were happy to replace training against a visiting NCAA side.

Teams still come, womens teams seem more regular than mens at the moment and for some unknown reason a lot come into NSW.

Perhaps the College teams heard that we do not have insurance down south in the Land of Oz, so it is risky