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Australian basketball legend Andrew Gaze says an A-League type overhaul of the NBL is not the answer to fixing the issues currently facing the competition.
Gaze, Australia’s most famous basketballer, has been appointed to the interim board responsible to help reform the sport he dominated for two decades.
Top priorities will involve implementing the independent report outlining how the sport will move forward, and sorting out an NBL which has spent the off-season in crisis as the Sydney Kings and Brisbane Bullets collapsed.
But Gaze doesn’t believe a slash-and-burn approach like Australian soccer adopted with the A-League to replace the old National Soccer League is the right way forward.
He said Australian basketball’s overall health was excellent — pointing to high participation rates and thriving junior competitions — with the only fixing needed at the sport’s elite level.
“The fundamentals of basketball and soccer are vastly different — there’s a lot of different circumstances,” Gaze said.
“There might be some generalities (between the NBL and old NSL) but to say all the answers are found in soccer … some of the comparisons are just not applicable.
“We need to find the right system, an enduring system for our sport.
“The perception of our sport is not that great. But right now, the base of the pyramid is very, very good – all the indicators are good.
“It’s wrong to say basketball’s not in a healthy state.”
Gaze said the collapses of the Kings and Bullets were not due to basketball matters, rather economic problems affecting their owners.
But while admitting there was perhaps a case to tighten up the ownership structure within the NBL by making would-be owners come up with significant financial guarantees, that would not have helped the Bullets.
“No matter what criteria for ownership you would have had in place, (ex-Bullets owner and childcare magnate) Eddy Groves would have ticked every box,” Gaze said.
“Their (the Bullets and Kings) situations have got a lot to do with the non-basketball related situations of their owners.”
The former NBA player and five-time Olympian is hoping to call on his experience at all levels of the game, including the past three years since his retirement spent coaching at junior level, to steer the sport forward.
The interim board, which is responsible for the merger between Basketball Australia and the NBL and the overall reform of the sport in Australia, is expected to announce its future business plan on October 11.
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