Hoops

Ken Cole: NBL needs to go back to winter

maybe I'm a bit off topic here, but it does have relevance to today because of reference to it etc.

the supposed oz bball boom was actually a fluke in time and nothing to do with bball management etc in oz....rather professional sports in the rest of the world.

what we see now is the true landscape of pro sports.

NBL-winter Vs summer ? its not relevant.....if you don't have any money you cant play professional sports !

paul: I was just talking about the 'move to winter' notion, not the idea of a second competition.

how much money was available for players in Europe during the "boom" era in oz?

would we have even seen Gaze and co if the same $ was available??

surely Grace,Fisher,Gaze,Vlahov,Bradke,Copeland etc wouldn't even have played/or limited in the NBL with such money available?

the whole thing needs to be kept in context....it's professional sports...it's about money!

Is there actually any reason to believe Boomers players would play here during winter? Every two years, winter would involve national team work anyway, and the whole purpose of moving season is so they can still play Europe for the money. Why wouldn't they want an off-season every two years, and the lighter amount of work every other year?

It's a massive and completely unfounded assumption.

Its status as the best league in the country, for starters. Its TV presence. Generally, everything it has that the SEABL doesn't, except its lineage and intellectual property. It'd become a second-tier league nobody would care about.

On the pickier side, Fremantle is to 'regional area' as 'tomato' is to 'suspension bridge'. Bunbury, Mandurah etc. are better WA examples.


Bear: explain how a winter season not being suicide and the above facts about the news coverage of the NBL being significantly below the AFL even under perfect conditions in the best market in the country can coexist? Winter being suicide isn't just my opinion, it's a conclusion based on facts. If there are any facts favourable to a winter season, you've not provided them here. "People want to be outside" isn't valid. The biggest crowd in NBL history? During summer. The longest string of 10k+ attendances by a single team? During summer. The Wildcats and the Big Bash League head to head? Wildcats won. Ashes on at the WACA? It was too hot, everyone went home.

You might not be removing the NBL in name or lineage, but you seem to be removing the NBL in form, unless I'm misunderstanding.

As far as a winter super-league goes, Boti Nagy came up with this: http://www.botinagy.com/blog/nbl-winter-superleague-why-not/

How does that compare to your idea?

@koberulz, thanks for your input.

Not really, conferences don't necessarily mean you only play the teams in your conference, I would suggest expanding the NBL and scheduling conferences using common sense would at least be no worse in the 'oh not them again' argument.

Power SEABL teams is what I meant, or at least teams with a sound financial backing at Association level...

Oh, and Winter wouldn't be suicide mate, just your opinion versus mine (and many others), cheers...

Bear:
Conferences: People are already complaining about the same teams facing each other too much. Adding conferences would be ridiculous. You'd just make the season even more monotonous, at the expense of the Wildcats-Breakers rivalry. Unless you put them in the same conference, which would defeat the purpose.

Expansion: It'll happen in 2015. That's basically a guarantee at this point. No idea what you mean by "existing power teams" though.

Winter: As above, the Wildcats being in the grand final struggled to make the news ahead of the AFL in Perth, which is easily the biggest basketball market in the country. Even during summer, the AFL is frequently higher-ranking news. Winter would be suicide.




Isaac: Surely what you're essentially suggesting is killing the NBL off and replacing it with two things that aren't the NBL?

Isaac, I would see the NBL and SEABL working like the AFL and VFL (or other state football leagues), in a complimentary fashion.

One as the major powerhouse league and the other as the feeder league, perhaps backed more by Associations than stand alone clubs.

The concept here would make Winter a truly basketball season, no fear from other codes should be an issue, because basketball will stand on its own I believe...

Summer season would be left for social and domestic competitions (basketball), which is unique compared with footy codes anyway, since they totally rest during the Summer season.

Well, HO, they of course would be as subjective as any ideas mentioned on a forum like this, wouldn't they?

Especially since there are so many ideas brought forward.

Some may even work, my frustration may be shared by others who would like to see some real changes like the idea of going back to winter, but probably won't.

A short list IMHO would include:

WINTER SEASON
REDUCING COST WITH CONFERENCES
EXPANDING LEAGUE BY ADDING EXISTING POWER TEAMS
SECOND LEAGUE (SEABL) COMPLEMENTING NBL
TEAMS BACKED BY ASSOCIATIONS SUPPORTED BY NBL
PROMOTION NOT IN FEAR OF AFL OR NRL

Just to name a few ideas I believe would be better than the current situation, but like I have indicated before on this forum, just my opinion mate, nothing to be hung and quartered over...

I wonder, Isaac, why it is that the best concepts for the game here in Australia are just not being considered by the powers to be??

Is it ego, is it a lack of courage, is it just that we don't have the passion in them that other sports have with their official governance..?

Whatever it is, it is frustrating, is it not...?

Christmas is generally the period the NBL does best, as far as I know.

The idea that the league could run winter without clashing with AFL is ridiculous.

I think they need to go back to winter. Having NBA and college on is always going to mean it will struggle for TV viewers.
Just run it July - Oct when NBA is not on. 21 games each team plays the others 3 times then playoffs.

Also you really need a salary cap like A - league where you have a marque player that sits outside of the cap. You need some better players to keep it interesting or you could use the marque spot to get one of those aussies in europe.

Overall you really need a billionaire with money to burn like lowey to get it going. I wish I was a mining billionaire but sadly i'm not.

If we want something drastic done about the NBL and some real changes then we have to accept the results, or consequences, but I for one think we should at least consider a potential plan and have a go at it.

WINTER - pros and cons, but I have always thought it was the way to go. More positives than negative possibilities IMHO (without going into details).

LEAGUE - Restructure, completely to create two divisions to cater for NBL and SEABL level teams as a Australian/NZ International competition.

PROMOTION - Bring in the juniors, the Associations and the State Leagues all on board during the peak basketball season.

Want real changes, stop the band aid fixes and let's take a plunge, otherwise it is pretty much just a boring argument...

In stead of fearing winter we should embrace it, because this is actually the major basketball season in Australia, but the NBL are not aligned to it!!

From what I heard, opening weekend was a massive improvement, but since then they've been below where they were last season. So is it a case of a couple of bigger weekends burying the decreases elsewhere, or have things got better? Or have I just heard wrong?

TV ratings are not down.

Crowd numbers as a whole are down, as are TV ratings. Which is bizarre; it's not like there was any promotion any of the last three years that attendance and ratings have grown, so what's changed?

Sadly, next season is likely to be terrible too; it's not until 2015/16 that BA's horrible contracts will end and the NBL will be able to get some decent broadcasting/website deals.

Is there any reason at all to actually believe those players would play in Australia if we changed seasons? It's not going to affect any NBA players, for starters, as they'd only be available from the end of June until the end of August.

Also, a lot of the ideas people have about the quality of imports comes from measuring them against the Aussies at the time, who were largely terrible. The quality of the product on the floor is light years ahead of where it was in the NBL boom.

And even if you could attract those players, is it worth the massive hit in attention you'll take due to competing with the AFL/NRL? Or having to have massive mid-season breaks every two years? Hint: no.

The NZNBL plays winter. Are the Breakers going to continue to participate, or do as well, if the NBL also plays winter?

What about players who currently play in both the NBL and a state or similar league (SEABL, etc)? What are they going to do in the off-season to get game minutes under their belt, develop, etc.?

Everyone points to Perth as the example to follow. They were in the grand final earlier this year, while round three of the AFL was on. The Wildcats struggled to make the news. They only cracked a mention the night after each game, four or five stories into the sports news. James Hird has been the top story much of the summer. The 'Cats have also played second fiddle to AFL players' Instagram vacation photos.

If the Wildcats, with all the success they've had, can't compete with the AFL off-season, how are any of the other clubs, particularly Melbourne, going to fare?


And that's not even going into Cole's suggestion that we support Kristina "I don't know what you think having an NBA game here will achieve for basketball in this country" Kenneally and BA, who are responsible for the terrible broadcast contracts under which the NBL is suffering, or his suggestion that we institute a minimum salary that is more than what the three regional clubs can afford to spend, or his suggestion that the points cap legislates mediocrity, despite everyone but Sydney and Wollongong being far from mediocre, Wollongong due to budget and Sydney due to stupid import selection, neither due to points.

He's also claimed nobody's ever bought a championship (2007 Bullets say hi) and that no team has ever spent so much that it ruined a league (late-00s Kings, Tigers and Bullets say hi).

He clearly doesn't have a clue about the league, has zero credibility, and Boti Nagy should never have printed that utterly ridiculous article without serious rebuttals to Cole's stupidity.

HO, no figures but plenty of A-League fans follow EPL teams too. One is played late afternoon/evening, the other is either overnight or catch a replay in the morning. Nothing stopping you following both except for outside commitments.

That could suggest there's more of a clash with the NBL and NBA, given you might catch your NBA replay at night if you were at work or doing something else during the day. This is in fact what I do. Not sure if that's going to make that big an impact though. Surely people can adequately follow both.

until the clubs/league are financial enough to market the game properly we wont really know if it will work summer or winter.

To give you an idea, the Big Bash crowds aren't anything to really write home about. But when you're capable of drawing 1 million viewers three nights in a row (as they did last weekend), then you'll get a $100 million broadcast deal (as they did this season). That money filters back to the clubs, who can afford more marketing, more resources etc, which itself probably lifts crowds anyway.

Crowds would obviously suffer, that's a given with midweek games. The venues it would really work in would be inner-city (to attract the after-work crowd) and not too big that a drop in attendance would be a huge blow. Perth Arena, at the Wildcat's current level of popularity, and Margaret Court Arena when it opens next year are good examples.

BUT, crowds would be a secondary concern if you go down this path. It would be about filling a void in the market (I'd imagine there's plenty of people who want to come home from work and watch some live sport) and as a result getting a much, much, much, much better TV deal dollars-wise. Ideally the increased TV dollars would compensate clubs for lesser crowds and then some.

This is the direction the TV networks want the NRL and AFL to go. The NRL have Monday night games every week and have sacrificed crowds to do so. Next year, NFL-style, they'll finish the season with a string of Thursday night games too. The AFL are playing around with Sunday nights on FTA next season and are always experimenting with Mondays and Thursdays.

Besides, with the overwhelming popularity of those two leagues, were the NBL to move to winter it probably wouldn't have a choice. The only way to get attention will be to not go head-to-head with the AFL and NRL.

I'm curious. Would the 'move to winter' folk accept having a bunch of midweek games each week after the move takes place?

I'm talking Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays... all the nights the AFL and NRL aren't on our TV screens.

Summer is fine by me, Wildcats advertise and they out attend 1day internationals and fairly certain that at the same time Perth Glory are losing shitloads whilst Wildcats make a decent $million.

Teams need to advertise and if it takes a visiting Perth Wildcats team to advertise on their opponents Telly for the week leading up ie in Cairns or Townsville for example then surely that could be a trend that richer teams could use entering a rivals home court... Wouldn't see the use for it for Tigers games whilst they are playing at the tiny little stadium

I'm one that thinks the NBL is competing with the NBA and losing out as a result big time.

The proliferation of NBA games on pay TV and now the internet via League Pass are in direct competition with the NBL, and therefore the NBL is losing their own target market to the NBA. The NBA is the pinnacle and for most basketball enthusiasts #1 choice. You may be losing 50% or even more of your target market to the NBA - hoops in this country is biting off its own head as a result.

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