Next stop for Nathan Tinkler? Saving the NBL
Columnist By Ryan O'Connell, 3 May 2011 Ryan O'Connell is a Roar Expert
- Tagged:
- Nathan Tinkler, NBA, NBL, NEW ZEALAND BREAKERS
Did you know that the NBL Finals finished last Friday? In case you didn’t, the New Zealand Breakers won. But considering the lack of media coverage for the result, perhaps a more pertinent question is: will our domestic basketball league ever reclaim a spot in Australia’s mainstream sporting landscape?
Before basketball fans accuse me of bagging their sport, you should know that I am a basketball fan myself.
Basketball is in my veins, and I’m from what can best be described as ‘a basketball family’: my father was a head coach in the NBL, my brothers and I played representative basketball, and as a 6 year old ‘floor sweeper’, I once got into a slanging match with NBL legend ‘Mean’ Al Green. I still have nightmares about it.
It is therefore no surprise to learn that I want the NBL to prosper, let alone survive.
But does that mean I think it will?
Sadly, without a massive influx of cash, I struggle to see how the NBL will ever be a mainstream sporting code in this country again.
And by mainstream, I mean on parallel with the AFL.
It’s hard to believe that 15 years ago, the AFL and NBL were essentially neck-to-neck as sporting competition rivals – if not in crowd numbers, than at least when it came to the public’s consciousness nationwide. To look at the two sports now, and see how one has grown from strength to strength, whilst the other has become an afterthought, is a lesson in vastly differentiated fortunes.
The biggest difference between the two sports now, and the advantage the AFL has, is that the AFL doesn’t lose its best players overseas. In fact, they’ve even started poaching rugby league’s best, with the signings Karmichael Hunt and Israel Folau.
Meanwhile, most of Australia’s best and/or youngest basketballers don’t ply their trade in this country.
There is no shame in losing players to the NBA, the premier basketball competition in the world, and we can proudly boast having three players currently doing us proud in that league: Andrew Bogut, Patty Mills and David Andersen.
But what really hurts the local competition is the crop of other talented players that are hooping in Europe. Plus the forty Australians playing Division One college basketball, which translates to forty of our best players aged 17 to 21 also playing in America.
That’s a lot of talent not playing in Australia.
Just three players from the 2010 Australian Boomers World Championships squad call an NBL club home.
And hence we get to the crux of the problem: if you go watch an NBL game, you’re not watching the best possible product.
Almost every other major sporting code in the country showcases their best talent. When you watch Rugby League, Rugby Union, Aussie Rules, Cricket, etc, you’re generally watching the best players that sport has.
The A-League faces the same issue as basketball, and much like basketball’s ‘imports’, football have tried to circumvent the issue with their ‘Marquee Signing’ rule, which has brought names like Dwight Yorke and Robbie Fowler to our shores, with mixed commercial success.
If you cast your memory back to the mid-nineties when the NBL reached its apex in Australia, the cream of the crop of Australian talent was playing locally. There was only one top player, Luc Longley, who wasn’t lacing up his sneakers in the NBL.
And apart from the amazing local talent, including names like Gaze, Heal, Bradtke and Vlahov, we were also blessed with American imports with NBA-level talent.
Some of these imports ended up playing numerous seasons in the league, like Dwayne ‘D-Train’ McClain, Ricky ‘Amazing’ Grace, Lanard Copeland, etc. Others used the NBL as a short stint before heading back to the States for careers in the NBA, including Stephen Jackson, Doug Overton, Rick Brunson and Ray Owes.
When you throw in naturalised stars like Leroy Loggins and Scott Fisher, you start to get nostalgic and remember the high quality basketball we were witnesses to.
The bottom line? It was a great product, with the best of the best Australian players, and supremely talented American players.
The current NBL simply cannot make any those claims. And the public know it.
Matt Nielsen, Nathan Jawai, David Barlow, Joe Ingles, Brad Newley and Steven Markovic headline the numerous talented Australian players not lining up in the NBL. And the imports in the league today are nowhere near the standard of those when the NBL was at its peak.
And so we come to Nathan Tinkler.
The multimillionaire, who already owned the A-League’s Newcastle Jets, has just taken ownership of the NRL’s Newcastle Knights. And with the ink still wet on the contract, he wasted little time opening the chequebook, signing rugby league master coach Wayne Bennett to a lucrative contract.
Where this gets interesting for basketball fans is that Tinkler has a desire to create a ‘superclub’, with Newcastle representation in every major sport in Australia. This includes bringing an NBL club back to the Hunter Region, most likely in the form of the defunct Newcastle Falcons.
Considering the lack of serious financial investment in Australian basketball, the sport should be doing all it can to accommodate Tinkler. Australia does not have an abundance of multimillionaires. And the list of Australian multimillionaires interested in basketball is even shorter.
There are worse suggestions than approaching Tinkler with a proposal for him to buy into the entire league.
I’m sure that such a deal would not be at the top of his priority list, but whilst Tinkler’s heart will always be in Newcastle first and foremost, there would be little personal benefit to him in bringing a Newcastle team back into a weak NBL.
Therefore, why not utilise his business acumen and financial investment to make the league as strong and as viable as possible? And I don’t want to hear any rubbish about a ‘conflict of interest’ in having Tinkler own the NBL, plus a club competing in the NBL. As the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers.
At the very least, if he wants an NBL club in Newcastle, give him one. It’s a baby step towards getting more money into the sport.
Unlike football, the disparity between the money on offer in Europe and the money available in Australia isn’t astronomical. But it is more. And until the sport can generate the finances required to keep home grown talent here, along with enticing NBA-level imports to play in the competition, the best the NBL could hope to achieve is solid second-tier status in Australia’s sporting landscape.
It’s better than no existence at all.
But only just.
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Follow Ryan O'Connell on Twitter: @RyanOak
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- Nathan Tinkler, NBA, NBL, NEW ZEALAND BREAKERS
May 3rd 2011 @ 8:21am
PaddyBoy said | May 3rd 2011 @ 8:21am | Report comment
This was the first year I watched NBL, and I must say that I enjoyed it. Series between Perth and New Zealand was a cracker. Is the league independant or is it run by the national body?
May 3rd 2011 @ 8:28am
The Cattery said | May 3rd 2011 @ 8:28am | Report comment
Note to editors: should be Tinkler in the title.
May 3rd 2011 @ 8:29am
sledgeross said | May 3rd 2011 @ 8:29am | Report comment
Ryan, I agree. Oh how I feel nostalgic about the glory days of the NBL. The D-Train’s tomahawk vs Copelands alley-oop. The twin midgets of Larkin and Locke at Geelong. McDaniel down in Tassie. The Reebok Blacktop 3 on 3.
God I miss the 90′s!
May 3rd 2011 @ 9:42am
Ryan O'Connell said | May 3rd 2011 @ 9:42am | Report comment
I was a pageboy at Wayne McDaniel’s wedding! True story!
May 3rd 2011 @ 8:37am
The Cattery said | May 3rd 2011 @ 8:37am | Report comment
It’s a gross exaggeration to state that 15 years ago the AFL and the NBL were neck to neck.
I doubt there is a single metric you can point to at that time that would show any form of parity between the two.
If there is a lesson to be drawn, it is that it is completely unrealistic to expect a new sport or a new competition to challenge well entreched sports.
May 3rd 2011 @ 9:41am
Ryan O'Connell said | May 3rd 2011 @ 9:41am | Report comment
Hey Cattery,
I think the parity was in regards to the respective awareness of each league at the time. If you were to ask any Australian in the 90’s to name major sporting competitions in Australia, the NBL and AFL would have been grouped together. However, if the same question was asked now, I have doubts on whether many people would name the NBL. That’s the point I was trying to make: that the AFL has gone from strength to strength, whilst the NBL has fallen away.
Cheers
Ryan
May 3rd 2011 @ 9:01am
Moose said | May 3rd 2011 @ 9:01am | Report comment
Why bother?
When the league started there wasn’t the access that Foxtel now affords of the NBA.
It was a basketball fans best/worst option.
Australian’s recognise third rate (and that’s being kind to the NBL) leagues when they see one.
The same can said of the Australian PGA tour and the A-League. Walk around town and count the amount of premier league jerseys you see compared to A league.
May 3rd 2011 @ 9:40am
Gruff said | May 3rd 2011 @ 9:40am | Report comment
The NBL’s never going to compete with the NBA, because that’s the pinnacle of the sport. But I have to admit that when the NBL was in its heyday, it was good fun to watch. Having NBA cast-offs, plus good Aussie talent, made it a good product.
Now its the dregs of the sport. It’s like watching a state league-level sport.
May 3rd 2011 @ 9:12am
Rooster said | May 3rd 2011 @ 9:12am | Report comment
The NBL can’t be saved. There’s too many sports in this country and not enough people. The NBL can’t compete with quality codes like the NRL and AFL. Plus the NBL is poor. The quality of the games are low considering you can watch the NBA on One.
May 3rd 2011 @ 9:57am
AT said | May 3rd 2011 @ 9:57am | Report comment
The biggest problem was the void that Heal and Gaze left when they retired. No one filled their places, from a talent or personality point-of-view. The league lost their drawcards, both in terms of ability and media/fan interest.
Maybe some of those younger players would have filled the void if they had stayed here.
May 3rd 2011 @ 12:39pm
Whites said | May 3rd 2011 @ 12:39pm | Report comment
True. Gaze is the only Aussie basketball player you actually see on TV today advertising something. It’s for his bad back, Isn’t it?
May 3rd 2011 @ 10:06am
Chris said | May 3rd 2011 @ 10:06am | Report comment
A mixed bag of an article…
Your claim that the NBL was on par with the AFL in the mid-90s is laughable. It wasn’t close in ANY measureable sense.
However, your point that AFL has gone from strength to strength while the NBL has fallen away is spot on. And the analogy of basketball and football losing their best talent overseas is also correct. But I suspect the Australian ‘stars’ of the mid-90s were playing in Australia because they weren’t quite good enough to make it in the US. There were a couple who were fringe NBA quality (Shane Heal, Andrew Vlahov as examples),but most of them weren’t up to that level.
Australians are used to seeing the best in the world (or, very close to it) playing in the major codes (cricket, AFL, NRL and Super Rugby). Football and basketball (and baseball too for that matter) will never reach those heights, and as such do not represent the same level of quality of viewing.
May 3rd 2011 @ 10:19am
Ryan O'Connell said | May 3rd 2011 @ 10:19am | Report comment
Hey Chris,
As I mentioned in a reply earlier, when I was talking about the parity between the two sports, I was referring to the level of awareness of the two respective national leagues. I wasn’t talking crowd numbers, and referenced that in the article. ‘Rivals’ is accurate, but I think I was probably prone to a touch of hyperbole in writing ‘neck-to-neck’.
In terms of saying the mid-90′s stars weren’t good enough – it’s true that most weren’t good enough to make the NBA. But back then, if that was the case, they then played in Australia. Now, if they’re not good enough to make the NBA, they disappear to Europe instead of coming home.
May 3rd 2011 @ 12:25pm
mintox said | May 3rd 2011 @ 12:25pm | Report comment
NBL’s profile was pretty big in the Early 90s, it was the novelty item on the Australian Sporting landscape and with the NBA at its previous peak the sports profile was never higher in Australia.
I don’t think that it was on par with AFL in reality but as far as media coverage and being talked about, the NBL was punching well above its weight. Remembering of course that this was at a time when the NBL was a true national league whilst the VFL/AFL was struggling with poor teams in Brisbane and Sydney plus Adelaide was the new kid on the block.
The NBL will never reach those heights again as the sporting landscape in this country is well and truly changed. The casual fan, which once would go to an NBL game now has many other choices (including sitting at home in front of the TV watching the NFL, NHL, EPL, NBA etc etc).
It’s already been said in many threads written about the A-League but equally applies to the NBA. The sport needs to start concentrating on the fans that matter. The people that play the sport and understand the sport and are more likely to accept that whilst it’s not on par with the NBA, it’s still something that they want to watch. The casual fans that worry about whether or not a league is good enough to watch aren’t the ones the sport should be worrying about.
May 3rd 2011 @ 12:44pm
Mookie said | May 3rd 2011 @ 12:44pm | Report comment
There actually were some players, such as Gaze, Heal, Vlahov, Bradtke and later the likes of Simon Dwight and Sam Mackinnon who would have been on the NBA radar and these days would have made it onto NBA rosters in bigger roles.
It’s well accepted that the NBA has increased their global scouting and awareness of overseas talent in the past decade… At times they have even gone so far as stretching to pull in European “prospects” who amounted to nothing, whereas in the 80s they would’ve been much happier to settle for a safe, but relatively unexciting American option.
The number of international players in the NBA has increased at huge rates over the years. For the sake of comparison, in 2000-01 there were 45 international players from 28 countries on opening night rosters. In 2010-11 there were 83 players from 37 countries. I don’t have the numbers from the 80s and 90s, but rest assured that they were much less again.
The international prospects for players these days has simply changed, meaning that we struggle to keep our guys on shore.
May 3rd 2011 @ 10:08am
Shawn said | May 3rd 2011 @ 10:08am | Report comment
Tinkler’s money can only help, so why not give it a shot. If his millions can entice some washed up NBA players to have a couple of years down under at the end of their career, I’d go watch. It’s like the super league in England, with Aussies spending their twighlight years playing there. Maybe the NBL can do the same.
May 3rd 2011 @ 11:02am
Chop said | May 3rd 2011 @ 11:02am | Report comment
I’d love to see the Falcons make a comeback to the NBL and Tinkler could be the man to make that happen.
It’s been a long sad decline for the NBL which used to be great viewing back in the glory days.