Basketball On The Internet.

IF speculation is correct that Basketball Australia chief executive Matt Scriven has rejected Geelong's bid for a WNBL licence at the same time as Melbourne Boomers have withdrawn as a club then it's high time the league ditched the federation's tattered umbrella to "go it alone" and seek the support of NBL owner Larry Kestelman.

Let's be brutally blunt about BA. It has an upside. It can run junior championships and it can (maybe) run national teams. But one thing it has never been able to successfully or consistently do is run a national home/away-style competition.

It failed when it ran the NBL, it closed the doors on the SEABL and now it is languishing with the WNBL.

Remember, BA never started a single one of those competitions. The clubs who launched them did it and they did it for the benefit of better competition across state lines.

Unsurprisingly, with each national competition, national interest grew until the clubs no longer felt qualified to control their own destinies.

Eventually as the parent federation, BA felt some obligation to intervene when the leagues faltered but whenever it became the long-term management of a league, it ultimately suffered.

Let's be honest. BA is not equipped to capitalise on any public gains basketball makes via its national competitions or its national teams.

Apart from grants, what long-term benefit has our sport been able to manufacture from the success of the Australian Boomers winning a Bronze Medal at the Tokyo Olympics?

SFA is the correct answer.

Here's another question. Which is Australia's best-known and most beloved national sporting team today?

Congratulations if you said "the Matildas."

How well have they capitalised on the FIFA Women's World Cup being played across Australia last year? Suddenly Mackenzie Arnold, Mary Fowler, Ellie Carpenter, Caitlin Foord and Hayley Raso, for example, are names most of us now know. And just as most sports fans know of Lauren Jackson, Sam Kerr has long been a household name.

So how well did basketball capitalise on the Bronze Medal success of the Opals at the FIBA World Cup in Sydney 18-odd months ago?

Can the average punter name anyone from that team beyond LJ?  

But this isn't a new problem. Way back in  Seoul in 1988, the Opals reached the Bronze Mecal game and were one missed semi-final box-out assignment from the Gold Medal game.

Yes, our sport's diehards can name Michele Timms from that crew and maybe LJ and Penny Taylor from the Opals' 2006 World Cup Gold Medal champions.

But taking advantage of any of those milestone successes to promote our sport's identities and our sport's great leagues?  

Didn't happen, hasn't happened.

Didn't happen at NBL level either until Larry Kestelman came along about a decade ago, rolled up his sleeves, dipped deep into his pockets and said let's give this a go.

The issues with BA administering and managing the WNBL stem from the fact the federation already has so much on its plate, the league is more a burden than a boon. There's no money for this, there's no money for that.

Then there's the players association advocating for higher salaries while two clubs have not properly paid all their players, one from two years back, one currently.  

And what's worse, BA does not learn from its own previous mistakes or history.

Almost a decade ago, then BA chief exec Anthony Moore had two bids to suit a team in South East Queensland, the absence of a Brisbane-based team viewed as something of an embarrassment.

BA decided to go with the "sexier" bid, which had some big names involved, even though the other bid was sound and had Brisbane basketball stalwarts such as Jason Chainey and Brian Kerle attached to it.

The South East Queensland Stars petered out in less than a year. Lesson learnt?

Guess not, if the speculation this Geelong United bid has been rejected proves correct. Remember, Melbourne Boomers have returned their licence while the Geelong bid has some folks in its consortium who might actually be more financial than the backer(s) of reigning champion Southside Flyers.

It really looks like the WNBL has reached that point where it needs to privately follow up Larry Kestleman's stated interest.

A seven-team comp or a band-aided eighth team, run by a BA that recognises the league's value but clearly does not have the nouse or resources to manage it, are scenarios too familiar with the failures of the past.