Hoops

36ers imports off the mark

Isaac - Yes,the NBA recruits for the future....and then sends them off to another league to develop!!

Perhaps NBL teams should have a squad of 20. That would be 10 players in the first team and the other 10 playing SEABL or similar. A bit like AFL teams having seconds.

Would that work?

Numbers, the NBL does need to increase crowd numbers. The fact the NBL is on One HD is helping IMO.

FTO TV helps drive up excitement, and gives the sport the promotion is needs. Free promotion is so important. The sport needs a few snake oil salesmen in the PR department to get some coverage.

Let's pick on Channel 7 for instance. Have a look at the news sports reports. OMG, we are not even playing aussie rules at the moment and there is a news story every day. Draft picks, someone's knee injury, a good news story on some player's mum who make potpurri, "let's go fishing with some random has been".

7 has the broadcast rights to AFL so it needs to drum up interest so it can sell advertising space. I would suggest that C7 places emphasis on AFL as a result so there needs to be lots of news stories (all positive) on AFL, and get players, former players, coaches etc to go on the "lifestyle" programmes. Why don't these programmes do a "fishing with Balls" segment?

Personally, a "Julius swims with the white pointers" would be a favourite for me.

All this talk about development of a team in a professional league - I don't get it? Only 10 players on the roster, so shouldn't they be good enough to be there?

I can't imagine that any NBA team would be looking at a 3 or 5 year plan to make finals. Yes, that is a different world altogether, but you get my point?!

Do the fans of any team go to the games to watch a 3 year development plan unfold and hope that they have a win or two in the mean time?

Solution – raise the cap. Enable better quality players to be attracted to NBL which will surely have the flow on effect in terms of support and revenue. If the team owners aren’t getting a return on their investment straight away………be patient and wait 3 to 5 years!!!!

Anons gonna anon.

Winder Groves and Grizzard's 36ers stats are similar.
DeVries stats - I imagine make him sixers best player this season ( other than shooting % - but, you'd think that will improve - which he said it should do.)

All Clubs want their imports to be stars, and generally this means scoreboard results. Let's face it, nothing more exciting that being 2 points down, 17 secs to go on the final play and the import swishes a 3 from the corner to seal a one point win.

The average offense is 81.8 ppg. Imports generally make up 12.9 ppg each (32% of output), the Australasians get the other 56 ppg. Teams need to be scoring at the rate of 0.409 points per man per minute to get 81.8 ppg. At the moment, imports score at the average rate of 0.465 pts/min (12.9 ppg in 27.7 mins) Sam Harris is scoring an amazing 2.143 ppg - give him 40 mins!

The leader in the imports is Ervin at 0.657 p/min and Grizzard was scoring at 0.346.

Therefore, if you look at the scoreboard as the sole criteria, any import scoring less than 12.9 ppg and/or 0.465 p/min needs to be concerned and less than 0.409 p/min needs to be worried about their spot and start shooting practice.

Currently, De Vries is 0.446 and Winder is 0.400 points per minute. Reckon "Silky" is travelling OK at the moment, but should be over 14.6 ppg.

The "Sidewinder" should be averaging over 12.6 ppg and might need to book a consult with the Shooting Doctor to work on his 3 pointers if he wants to spend Christmas with the Coopers.

I think with Imports its hit or miss.
The 36ers have probably been a little unlucky with their recent imports over the years.

Alot of imports that come into the league have good stats overseas and the coaches look at extreme amounts of tape etc.

Its just hit or miss as to whether those stats translate into the NBL.

Mark Tyndale averaged 19.4 ppg in his junior year at Temple, John Gilchrist averaged 15.4 points in his second year at Maryland(which is a pretty bigtime school) and they did an alright job in the NBL. Eric Devendorf tore stuff up at Syracuse and averaged 17 ppg in his junior year, and yet he has struggled this year. On the other hand, Carlos Powell averaged 16 ppg in his senior year at SC and yet he came into the league and absolutely killed it, i still remember that 50 point game. Same with Ty McKee, he averaged 18 ppg at small Coppin State Uni yet he came over here and killed it too.
I guess what im saying is that all those players I mentioned above had similar stats in College, yet their influence on the NBL varied greatly.
You can see why the 36ers staff got Gilchrist and Tyndale in..they had spectacular college careers.
They just didn't fit in or their game wasn't suited to the NBL.

Every team has signed a few bad imports over the years. It's not like coaches (namely the 36ers coaches) are going out and getting imports that have averaged 5 ppg at some small university or college.
The Winder choice IMO wasn't the best though; The dude averaged 2.2 ppg with 7.4 mpg at Texas. Good that he was from Texas, which is mostly always in the top 25 polls. But IMO why sign a guy that didn't do anything in his collegiate career.
I can live with coaches selecting guys with good stats at college or overseas and them failing or underperforming because they don't fit the system or style of play. I can't live with coaches getting imports that have proved barely anything or nothing and they are not performing.

Keep in mind that Creek will be joining the squad before years end as well; so more "gelling" will be required.

Every game so far has shown one thing (same thing for the past 2 years): the team needs to be consistent in their play; that's all.

The NZ game "WAS" a win; consistency let down the team in the dying minutes. The Breakers kept consistent to take the lead.

We do need 4 - 6 weeks to gel guys..

Most of the existing imports have taken a huge hit in the scoring department because of the shorter game.

High scoring in this league has always been due to the fast-paced offence of most teams. Guys like Ervin tend to make most of their points from scoring in the first 5-10 seconds of posession. The rest comes from spot 3's.

You also have to say to that nearly every team in the league this season has improved their defence ten-fold. Unless you get a fast break or steal, most teams are forced to use up at least 20 seconds of the shot clock running plays.