Has basketball lost its old school appeal?

 
Melanie Dinjaski Columnist

By , 22 Jan 2011 Melanie Dinjaski is a Roar Expert

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To my delight, last night I got to relive some childhood memories watching the 1996 basketball film Space Jam. It got me thinking about the game during this time, and how immensely popular it was. But does basketball today experience the same popularity?

As a kid during the 1990s, basketball was a favourite schoolyard game, and living in Sydney, the Kings was the team I barracked for.

Basketball singlets were a must-have fashion item.

Air Jordans and Reebok Pumps were everywhere. The envy I felt having never owned those oversized shoes with the all-important orange basketball pump on the tongue, was more than unbearable. And yes, Space Jam, which featured Chicago Bulls ace, Michael Jordan, and a selection of other international basketball superstars, was an instant box office hit.

During this time, Australian basketball was among the most watched sports in Australia. Among the footy codes, basketball held its own.

But a tumultuous history in the late 2000s, with clubs coming in and out of the league due to financial collapse, meant that interest in our national league, the NBL, slid to an all-time low.

So low that, for years, it seemed as though Australian basketball had simply vanished off the face of the earth, only to appear out of nowhere every four years, when our Olympic teams would compete on an international stage.

And as basketball was on the decline, its most similar rival sport – netball – was unexpectedly on the way up.

But there has been some progress made since the decline of the NBL. Substantial sponsorships have given the league and it’s clubs some much needed financial stability, and after securing a long-term contract with free-to-air network One HD last year, NBL is again available to the general public (70% of whom do not have pay-TV), with the channel exclusively broadcasting several games a week.

However, we’re now at the halfway mark of the 2010/11 season, and with rival sporting codes enjoying their off-season, you’d think that all we’d be doing is watching professional basketball.

Right? Well not really.

OneHD’s NBL coverage average audience ranges from 40-70,000 viewers, which hardly threatens to challenge any of the high ranking televised sports such as cricket, AFL and NRL.

Unfortunately, I still think b-ball has failed to reach the lofty heights of the 90s era. Something is missing. Something has changed.

NBL teams and their players used to be a topic of regular discussion amongst everyone, young and old. We knew the names of basketball personalities and those flamboyant US imports would always provide entertainment.

But can we say the same for Australian basketball today?

I fear that basketball has lost it’s allure of earlier years, and has been pushed aside in favour of other burgeoning sports.

Why is this so?

Australia has had a relatively long history with basketball at an amateur level, but the professional ranks are much younger. Male professional basketball has been around for more than thirty years, women’s pro basketball has been going for twenty-five years and the country has seven state basketball leagues.

It is surprising then that the sport hasn’t been institutionalised as a major part of the Australian sporting calendar.

The good news is that NBL attendance figures have been steadily improving since the turbulent 2000s, particularly throughout this 2010/2011 season, and excellent attendance has not been limited to city areas, with the regional teams attracting decent crowd figures too.

In addition to this, there’s no doubt that the talent pool around the world has drastically improved in the last twenty years. Australia has produced home-grown talent in players such as Patrick Mills and the NBA’s 2005 first draft pick, Andrew Bogut, who have had international success.

Australia’s national women’s team, the Opals, have achieved a great deal in recent Olympic campaigns, led by Lauren Jackson and Penny Taylor, and in the men’s national team, Andrew Gaze, Shane Heal and Chris Anstey are rightly household names. Furthermore the junior ranks are going strong and Australia’s national wheelchair basketball teams have similarly had success at the Paralympic Games.

All of these factors indicate that the future may be looking up for basketball in Australia. But there remains some areas in need of addressing.

Australia’s third largest city, Brisbane, still lacks a team. But the NBL have shown interest in including them as the tenth franchise in the league for the 2011/12 season.

Also, attendance for the NBL’s relatively small capacity venues are not regularly selling out as they did in the 90s, and this is undoubtedly because of the lack of public exposure and community involvement necessary for a struggling sporting league.

For example, around Brisbane, even when faced with a terrible losing streak, in a notably NRL-mad city, the A-League’s Queensland (Brisbane) Roar logo could be found in every street mag, on billboards and fliers. The club had numerous ticket giveaways, kids clinics, and player appearances at public events.

This type of relentless marketing may have seemed pointless when the Roar were struggling at the bottom of the table, but now that they’re winning, the hard yards done in the early years, have built up a public awareness of the team and the brand that is priceless now.

Another problem is the small salary cap in the NBL.

At roughly $1 million per team, with top US players genreally receiving a bigger chunk of the cap, most of the other players can expect less than $75,000.

This may not sound too bad, but with more elusive deals available abroad, as well as the US college system attracting Australian juniors, it becomes difficult to build on the wealth of talent produced in this country.

Encouraging signs in the last year or so, suggest that basketball could come back on the scene in a big way, but the road to such success is now a far greater task than it was in the 1990s, with other, previously less mainstream sports in Australia, now competing to be on equal footing as the major football codes.

The NBL will surely toil away over the next few years, trying to build more interest and it will come, but slowly.

However, the question remains: will we ever again see basketball become as popular as it was in the Jordan era?

You can follow Melanie Dinjaski on Twitter @MelanieDinjaski.
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