The Brisbane Bullets have been revived and will return to the NBL for the 2016-17 season after a seven-year absence.
NBL chiefs were in Brisbane on Friday to confirm the three-time champions will be back in the competition at the end of next year.
The team has reportedly abandoned the former Bullets colours of blue and gold and will instead wear maroon and gold, in a nod to Queensland’s traditional sporting colours and the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers.
The inclusion of a Brisbane team was a condition of the recent five-year broadcast deal signed with Fox Sports, who will broadcast every NBL game this season.
It comes on the back of a league-wide revamp of the NBL under the stewardship of millionaire businessman Larry Kestelman, who completed a $6 million takeover of the competition earlier this year.
Kestelman, now the NBL’s executive chairman, has been dubbed the Frank Lowy of basketball.
The Bullets announcement followed an open forum at the Brisbane Convention Centre on Friday, in which NBL chiefs began courting Brisbane’s basketball and business communities for support.
The team does not yet have an owner but the NBL is confident it can find enough investors to form a consortium and make it work.
The Bullets folded in 2008, the year after their third championship, when former owner Eddy Groves handed back their licence to the NBL following the collapse of his ABC Learning Centres empire.
South-east Queensland has not had an NBL team since the demise of the Gold Coast Blaze three years ago.
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