Hoops

After Wellington loses GF, owner talks about sale

First thing that comes to mind is - will he be freeing up room to buy into the NBL (AU) if Kestleman's approach on profit sharing is more to Mills' liking of which we can't answer at this early stage.

Second thing I wonder about is with all the money, time and resources he has put into the game, is he the type of personality that the league will bow down to to keep him happy or would they be happy to see the back of him?

Watched the game and there were a few bad calls, but nothing too different to any Australian NBL game.

Sour grapes in my opinion.

Some people like Mills pump so much money into their team that they expect to win and hence when they don't win, they simply struggle to accept it and find alternative points of blame.

Classy response by NBL and hit the nail on the head IMO:

'She did agree with Mills that the standard could go up, but said a lack of funding and lack of quality games made that a hard task.

"I'll put my hand up and say the standard does need to improve but it's about where we can improve and how we can do that.

"Players don't learn how to shoot baskets by watching video tapes, they learn it on the court and it's just the same for referees.

"I have to ref men's social basketball to get any practice in, so the question is how are we going to develop our referees when they aren't reffing any quality games? The answer is, we aren't."

Love the bit about players not becoming better shooters from watching film. People often don't look at refereeing in the same light as a player but she couldn't be any more correct. Being a referee and improving as a referee is just like a player developing - it requires game time in quality games and on-court practice. Not simply watching film and doing the theory behind it all.