Basketball On The Internet.

A MAGNIFICENT Opals reunion yesterday at Waterview which reintroduced the Oz94 Australian team and brought together past national women's players all the way back to the 1957 FIBA World Championship team, culminated with the announcement the 2006 Gold Medal-winning team will be inducted into the Australian Basketball Hall of Fame.

The first "team" to be inducted into the Hall, it is a great honour for what remains our most successful senior national team in basketball's Australian history.

For me though, it also raises the question that why is it in a TEAM sport such as basketball, we so far nationally have only inducted individuals?

Surely the 1988 Seoul Olympic Opals who made the medal playoffs for the first time, the 1994 team which further evolved the Opals culture and made a FIBA World Championship medal playoff, the 1996 Atlanta Olympic medallists ... I could go on and on - there are myriad TEAMS which should be inducted, or should already have been inducted.

In fact, a team should be added at every Australian Basketball Hall induction and, obviously, not just Opals teams.

The Boomers' 2021 Tokyo Olympic medallists are definitely contenders and the list rolls on. And not just national teams. There have been some great eras in NBL and WNBL basketball - St Kilda's early men's AND women's teams for example. Nunawading's women. Canberra Cannons' men.

BA should make it an absolute priority and maybe even backdate it? But maybe this is a topic for another time.

The Opals reunion was an extraordinary and unprecedented event. To have players such as Nita Burke and Nancy Hill from Australia's 1957 FIBA World Championship Australian team was amazing in itself.

This team fund-raised and sailed by ship to New Zealand and then on to Brazil to compete, its story - only seven players could afford to go in the Vern Thomas-coached team, with the manageress doubling as their eighth player - certainly unbelievable and well worth revisiting.

Dutchie Cook from the early 1960s team was also in attendance along with many players from the 1970s Australian teams - a greatly neglected era in successful women's basketball - the 80s, 90s and right through to the day's guests of honour, the current FIBA World Cup team.

Lauren Jackson, who led the 2006 Australian team to the Gold Medal and is a key member of the current team, spoke well, as did Kristi Harrower and Carrie Graf (live and/or on video), whose emotions provided an insight into why this program has been such a meaningful one over time.

Some 160 past and present Opals, not to mention past coaches, were at this spectacular event, along with international officiating icons such as Eddie Crouch and Ray Hunt.

To say it was brilliant would be an understatement in the extreme.

Jackson deferred her role in organising it to longtime Opals manageress Marian Stewart whose work in pulling it together is an achievement of which she can justifiably be extremely proud.

Congratulations to the 2006 Opals' team's Hall induction. Better late than never, it should be the first of many team inductions.