Hoops

Dusty gone?

Charlie #72458
I maybe wrong here, but I believe the year he came to Australia to play for the Victorian Giants, the salary cap was just over $1m. It dropped to just over $700K the next year. While it still didn't compare to the salaries in the US, it made a big difference on Australian standards.

Stephon, if you read my post correctly, you would have seen that I was talking about the following season 2007/2008, not this coming one. I openly admitted that the team would have to settle with being unsuccessful for another season before major changes should have been made.

There's no doubt a change was needed to the team but it wasn't Rychart that had to go. His departure does nothing to improve the team even if a half decent centre is recruited. I say half decent because the money will dictate that. What needed to happen was to accept the situation for another year until other players came out of contract. I would have replaced Rees with a cheap centre for a year until Cooper came out of contract. Accept the fact that for another year not much improvement was going to occur. Then used both salaries to get one decent centre and in the meantime train Oscar in that role as well (assuming he would accept that). If everything else failed in other areas of the team, the one consistent factor was always going to be Dusty. That consistency has now been lost.

Annon #72433

I agree in some respect with what you say. It seems the only passionate people are the fans. The players have a different agenda and that is to make as much money in as little time. You have to also remember though, that this sort of career has a short life span. A player puts in most of his life in intensive training to reach that level and then if they are lucky enough to get contracts, it only lasts for 10-15 years of their life. They have to try and make it worthwhile for the years of work they put into it to get themselves at that level.

In Dusty's case, he comes from USA where top basketballers are paid huge sums of money. It would have been a shock to the system to see how financially unrewarding it was when he arrived in Australia. I would say his expectations would have suffered a blow. Also as a non resident of Australia, a large portion of his money goes into tax. The you have the conversion rate to American dollars which further reduces its value. I honestly think he is only doing it to fulfil a love of the sport and to travel around. As far as money goes, it would be just as financially viable to get an office job back home.

Today is another sad day in the history of the 36ers. Another day to ponder over in the future and wished things hadn't turned out that way. Some people will never learn.