Hoops

Ingles starting well

Depends on what youre looking for in a basketball career Ricey. Do you want to be a small fish in a big pond, far from family and friends, trying to speak a different language, with no guarantee you'll get good court time and every chance of getting cut or not paid, or whatever?

I'm not saying you can't have a great experience playing in Europe, but sometimes it isn't all its cracked up to be.

I understand that the reality is most players want to go to Europe or the NBA, but there are exceptions. Gaze and Maher being the two biggest examples of guys that had stunning careers by staying in Australia instead of chasing their dreams overseas.

Having said all that in response to your comment, my original post above was really about NBL clubs behaving the same way as Euro clubs and demanding compensation to release players under contract to other clubs in future. The time for that is probably not right now with the league struggling, but I would like to see attitudes change with regard to releasing talented players.

As an example, no more signing guys like Newley, only for them to disappear overseas without a shred of compensation for the club!

Ingles will play NBA, but only NBA Live 09 or NBA 2K9.

That passport will make a difference. The word has been all along that Ingles will look to Europe before the NBL, but I'm still hopeful that, if Ninnis made a good pitch and a good multi year contract offer, that we could land him as our next cornerstone.

Either way, NBL teams have to stop behaving as if they are amateur clubs and that they shouldn't stand in the way of someone's European ambitions. If NBL clubs think and act as though they are second rate, everyone else will see them that way too!

From what I have heard from some other posters, only the big Euro clubs can offer better money than here and job security isn't great at a lot of clubs either.

The attitude of NBL clubs needs to be the same as the Euro clubs - you want our player, you owe us for developing him!

We need to create an incentive for NBL teams to sign young players and develop them. If there is a monetary reward at the end of it, not only will it help NBL clubs balance their budgets, but we will start developing a better system of talent identification and talent development that would hopefully, over time, improve our stocks of top notch basketballers.

Didn't Ingles already make a statement before he left for the US that it was either the NBA or Europe and that he would not be coming back to the NBL for next season?

The Warriors have given Ingles a good amount of time, considering he went undrafted - over 30 mins in two games and at least 17 mins in the other two.

'Jose' seems to have rebounded quite well in the two games he got over 30 mins, and I saw him make a nice pass against Detroit. His real problem is that he has just not been able to knock down enough shots, and that is going to kill his chances of making a roster - especially Nellie's Warriors, who are already loaded with athletic wings who can shoot!

Looks like he has one more game with the Warriors, so hopefully he can finally find his shooting touch and have a big scoring night. He needs to do what Newley did last year in Europe and hit like 8 threes in a row!

In the likely event he doesn't make an NBA roster, I hope Ninnis makes a strong play for his services. It would be really good for the Sixers to get a talent like him back in the fold! He and this new guy Gilchrist could present some big matchup problems for opposing backcourts with their height!

He played 40 minutes in the game too and hit 10 points on 4/10 shooting