NBL needs to ride Childress brain snap back to relevance

You know a sport’s grip on the nation’s collective consciousness is tenuous when it only makes the headlines off the back of bad news.

This is where Australian basketball and the NBL currently finds itself; on the periphery, trying desperately to claw some summertime attention away from those current media darlings in the A-League, and collectively face-palming when its star recruit decides it’s time go viral.

Worse still than Sydney Kings forward Josh Childress’ elbow-first flying leap at Wildcats swingman Jesse Wagstaff’s cerebral cortex was the limp punishment dished out by the NBL in response.

While the NRL’s decision to fine Paul Gallen $50k for dropping a c-bomb in their general direction was divisive, the condemnation of the lightness of the one-match ban dished out to Childress was near universal. And so the NBL drops back into the shadows again, until the next player has a brain explosion or a team other than the Perth Wildcats looks like favourites for the championship.

Rightly or wrongly, casual sporting fans see the NBL as a bit of a joke until you drag them along to a game and they realise, hey, it’s actually a top night out if you can handle the occasional shooting of bricks from the floor.

As a displaced Brisbane Bullets fan, I’ve tried to keep a toe dipped in the NBL’s waters while my home town’s hopes float around in a purgatory of Eddy Groves’ creation, settling on the Sydney Kings as a second team through geography rather than by design.

The Kings are a difficult team to love, not least for the fact that their current season squad often bears scant resemblance to the one before.

In the Bullets’ late 1980s/early ’90s heyday, you could buy a singlet with the name Loggins, Sengstock or Kerle on the back of it safe in the knowledge you’d get more than a season’s wear out of it.

In the current Kings era, names like Henry, Lazare, Sanders, Carmouche and (if current form continues) Perry are barely worth the synthetic purple and gold they’re printed on. The brand is still strong, but the Kings are struggling for identity, a championship point guard, and anything vaguely resembling an inside game.

They’re not alone in the NBL on the identity front. Latest cab off the rank there are the re-branded Melbourne United, who by torching the famous Tigers emblem over the off-season in a bid to unite Melbourne hoops fans have succeeded mainly in confusing much of the Australian basketballing public, and alienating its most legendary figure in Andrew Gaze.

Meanwhile, over in Perth, the Wildcats continue to draw crowds that many NRL clubs and most of the A-League would look upon with envy. With a stable squad, amazing new arena and unbroken history dating back to 1982, they’re something of an anomaly in a competition that saw the Canberra Cannons move to Newcastle to become the Hunter Pirates before inexplicably being shipped off to Singapore as the Slingers. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Also in Perth’s favour, the fact that last season’s star recruit James Ennis used the NBL as a proving ground for his claims at NBA stardom, which he underlined off the bench with this showstopper for the Miami Heat last week.

Aussie young gun Brock Motum inking a fresh deal with Adelaide after his late scratching from the Utah Jazz roster is another sign of renewed confidence in the league.

Now that people have been reminded of the NBL’s existence, the league just need people to tune in and stay tuned. The rematch between J-Chill’s Kings and Wagstaff’s Wildcats in two Sundays’ time would seem as good a time as any for the NBL to pack the Sydney Entertainment Centre like it’s 1989.

The NBL’s marketing team should be shouting this one from the rooftops.

But unless the Kings and coach Damian Cotter can find their offensive game, Childress’ prior offence might be the NBL’s only appearance on those end-of-year sporting highlight reels.