Basketball On The Internet.

NO MATTER how you look at the facts of this - and that's FACTS, not emotions - Earnest Ross and Tai Welsey should be ineligible to play in the NBL this season as unrestricted players.

Both have been signed to compete as unrestricted players as part of the erroneous "Oceania eligibility rule", Ross by Perth and Wesley by New Zealand, but neither meet eligibility requirements, regardless of which viewpoint you choose to take.

Viewpoint One

This is the position I exposed here a couple of days ago and goes to the simple truth that the NBL never formally adopted a Basketball Australia recommendation from FIBA Oceania to allow players from all Oceania Zone countries to be able to play as locals.

Remember, this was NEVER a FIBA directive but a sensible request from Steve Smith, who then was FIBA Oceania's secretary-general and the key man in negotiations which allowed New Zealand-born athletes to compete as locals when the Breakers became an NBL club.

Smith also held that role when the NBL again had to revisit its eligibility requirements as Singapore Slingers joined the league, which was a more complex situation because Singapore is not part of Oceania but in the Asian Zone. But I digress.

Just over a year ago and after much behind-the-scenes work, this announcement jointly was made by Basketball Australia and FIBA Oceania: http://bit.ly/1r2RpcY (Sorry, you're going to have to cut&paste the link)

All well and good but it never actually passed into any form of NBL legislation.

In September of last year, when the release came out, BA and the NBL were 9/10ths of the way through demerging so no-one paid any attention to writing that FIBA recommendation into law.

Everyone was aware of it but there's a massive difference between NBL lore and NBL law.

Whether that formally passed into any form of BA legislation is not the question here because for the NBL, its rules continued to allow only for Australian and New Zealanders to compete as unrestricted players in 2013-14.

And no-one has changed that for 2014-15.

In other words, Ross and Wesley are restricted players and cannot play.

As one club owner strongly pointed out to me this week, a press release on the BA or FIBA Oceania website does not in any way constitute anything legally binding.

Fair point.

Contrary to that, BA chairman Scott Derwin says once BA takes something such as that on as its law, ALL leagues in Australia are obliged to play by those rules.

OK, here's a couple of random points to finish this viewpoint.

1) Pretty sure that could be challenged because if BA solely determines NBL rules, then what's its position on the salary cap, the marquee player rule or the Player Points System?

Realistically, it has zero input into those or even into whether the NBL goes back at some point to 48-minute games.

As an independent league, founded by clubs and sanctioned by BA, surely BA's authority over it only extended to that specific period when BA was running it.

That period does not include the FIBA Oceania recommendation which, as has been pointed out repeatedly, is no-where on the NBL's books.

Lawyers could have a field day with this anomaly but any reasonable agenda-free onlooker who takes the view the Oceania eligibility ruling has not formally been adopted by the NBL then would have to concede Ross and Wesley are ineligible.

2) Though it is small potatoes, the SA State Basketball League (which assuredly falls under BA's masthead) in its just-completed 2014 season did not even allow New Zealanders to compete as unrestricted players!

How's that for cheek? Let alone adding someone from Guam or Tahiti!

Viewpoint Two

Once BA adopts an eligibility ruling as recommended by FIBA or specifically FIBA Oceania, all leagues in Australia are obliged to honor that ruling.

Here's a quick history recap for you.

In recent times, a couple of young Pacific Islander players, more women than men admittedly, but a few have shown an ability to compete at a higher level.

None are quite at the level where they could hold down an import spot in the NBL or WNBL but they certainly could win a roster spot.

That is what first prompted then-FIBA Oceania secretary-general Steve Smith to recommend to BA and Basketball New Zealand that they take on Oceania players as locals.

But here's the rub.

Oceania countries such as Guam, New Caledonia, Tahiti and American Samoa, for example, are not independent nations.

New Caledonians and Tahitians travel on French passports. Guam and American Samoa's residents travel on US passports.

So what we have is a situation where American servicemen and servicewomen based on Guam or American Samoa, have children born there and even though they are Americans, they also are classified as from Guam or American Samoa.

To ensure quality US players born in Guam or American Samoa who then spent their lives Stateside could not be snuck in as Oceania locals, the FIBA Oceania recommendation to BA and BNZ wasn't just that Oceania players be allowed to play as locals in Australia and New Zealand.

They had to have - and be able to prove - at least five years residency in the countries where they were born.

The National Olympic Committee of Guam has a five-year residency requirement of its citizens for them to be allowed to represent Guam internationally, which is why FIBA Oceania added that fair stipulation.

"To overcome a club importing a star via Guam, the person had to be resident and to be able to prove residency in Guam for five years," Smith said.

"And it was upto the player or players to prove their five-year residency, not upto FIBA to try and ascertain whether that was correct."

So there you go. That was part of the stipulation of Oceania players being deemed eligible in play in Australia and New Zealand - and the NBL - as "locals".

Lawyers could have a field day with this stipulation but any reasonable agenda-free onlooker who takes the view the Oceania eligibility ruling has been adopted by BA andf therefore must be by the NBL, then would have to take on the full wording, under which, Ross and Wesley are ineligible.

"If BA sets a rule, the NBL doesn't have any option (but to apply it)," Smith said. "It's a fundamental principle of all basketball."

Fair enough. I'm not arguing the case either way, just presenting it.

But if the rule IS being applied, unless Ross and Wesley can show they were resident in Guam for five years, then they don't actually qualify as the Pacific Islanders for which the ruling was intended.

The NBL General Managers and Chief Executives meet tomorrow in Brisbane.

That should be one very interesting meeting.