Two years ago, the NBL was a joke. Clubs were folding, some former high-profile owners were spending more time in courts of law than the basketball kind, and all involved were feeling a financial pinch.
So badly was the NBL going in 2008-09 that its champion team – Melbourne’s South Dragons – won the league then folded seven weeks later.
In the previous 12 months, both the Brisbane Bullets and Sydney Kings had collapsed because of owners with issues – ABC Learning Centres supremo Eddy Groves and Firepower chief Tim Johnston respectively.
Precariously placed clubs, precariously placed owners, disillusioned fans, and everyone waiting for the trap door to drop on Australia’s longest continuous national sporting league.
“We had to rebuild the trust. People were saying ‘I support a team, and then two years down the track, they’re gone’,” Basketball Australia (BA) chief executive Larry Sengstock says.
“We needed to build that trust and say ‘this is a team, you can support them and they’ll stick around’.
“When you’ve got that stability, that trust … well now we’re growing, and people are becoming more trusting.”
Australian basketball – and particularly the NBL – have deservedly taken their lumps.
Now NBL chiefs say they’ve rebuilt a strong, vibrant league worth a second look.
Attendances were up in 2010-11 – 12 per cent on average from the season previous.
The Sydney Kings are back. Despite a poor first season on-court, crowds have been excellent.
There is a free-to-air television deal with the Ten Network’s digital channel OneHD.
League revenue is skyrocketing. Merchandise sales are improving.
And market research suggests fans are now starting to become invested in clubs that those at the top say aren’t going to pack up and vanish.
Statistics can tell you anything you’re prepared to hear, and as Sengstock admits, the improvements are coming off a very low base.
But one certainty is the improvement is testament to the fact the NBL’s blueprint to rebuild the league in 2009 appears to be working.
That’s when those in charge zigged when others zagged.
Instead of taking a scorched earth approach after the Dragons’ demise and setting up brand new, unspoiled franchises, Sengstock and his board chose to work with what they had and roll into a new season immediately, and keep the NBL name.
It was seen as a short-sighted move, with soccer’s A-League going gangbusters.
Fast forward two years, and it could well prove a masterstroke.
The A-League badly botched its expansion, coinciding with perceptions the league is flatlining.
Basketball is the tortoise to its hare, creeping closer to respectability.
“We had committed owners and committed people in those cities and regions, and we decided that was the best model to go with,” Sengstock said.
“It was good to build on that history and we needed to build on that history. If you do like the A-League did and take a year off and rebuild and reposition, you take a risk.
“Once we made the decision to move forward, we made the decision to move forward with the group that had committed to do that.”
According to BA research, the average NBL fan fits into one of two categories.
Pre-teens and early teens who love to play and need heroes to latch on to – and those in their late 30s to early 40s – male and female.
They grew up in Australian basketball’s boom period of the early 1990s, helping pack venues around the nation as kids at NBL matches, or trading American NBA cards hoping for that elusive Michael Jordan to lob.
But their thoughts on the league, in the same research, are telling.
More than 57 per cent say they feel more confident in the league.
The NBL has also learned from the reaction to scheduling – a huge criticism as the league floundered.
Fans are overwhelmingly in favour of Friday and Saturday night games, and can expect the league to react in kind.
There remain weaknesses.
For all the talk of a Brisbane team re-entering the competition, it hasn’t happened yet and won’t this season – most likely in 2012-13.
Sengstock makes no apologies for proceeding with caution rather than without, considering what has happened when the league has been seduced by the wrong suitors.
“We’re still dragging ourselves out of a pretty big hole as far as the league and perceptions of basketball are concerned.
“Some of the lessons we’ve learned, you don’t want to take the risk if it’s not the right thing to do or right time to do it.
“Hold back a little while, get the thing right, then move with it.”
NBL growth is occurring against a backdrop of Australia producing more quality players than ever before for the overseas market.
Andrew Bogut, Patty Mills, Lauren Jackson and Liz Cambage are big news in the NBA and WNBA.
Two dozen more make big money in high-quality European leagues.
Australia’s women’s team the Opals are aiming to make a fourth consecutive Olympic gold medal match in London next year.
Sengstock stops short of declaring this the most important 12 months for the sport.
Not surprising. There have been plenty of important 12-month periods since 2008-09 for the former Boomers player as he steers the league he once played in.
But an improving NBL, followed by success in London with the nation watching, could well lead to basketball’s greatest leap forward since the 1990s.
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