Basketball On The Internet.

THE debate about whether the new NBL should re-introduce 48-minute games this season is moot right now regardless, but I have severe misgivings it would be the "cure-all" for our league's offensive woes.

Any reintroduction of the NBA format of four-by-12-minute quarters, in itself, would not be enough to guarantee the surge in scoring many expect would automatically occur. 

Go back to the NBL launch in 1979 when it started as a 40-minute league and have a look at the graph below. It shows the average score by teams per year.

The comparison of the years 1979-83 inclusive, has to be made against the years 2010-13 inclusive when, again, the NBL reverted to 40 minutes.

The intervening years were all in the 48-minute game format and while it is interesting by itself, you cannot help but notice the last three years of it had started a scoring decline.

Then comes the BA-driven switch back to 40 minutes and wow, how badly does the scoring drop for those eight-minutes lost? 

By more than 13 points per game.

That should have been expected but follow through the last three years and it just continues in decline.

Is that decline in scoring - and a decline in, therefore, the feature of our game which makes it most attractive to potential new eyes - determined by minutes in a game, great defences or just an ugly style?

Check it out:

I know purists will clamor to endorse the great advances in defensive strategies and how those, too, are a feature of our game.

Could not agree more.

But the truth is, those who consider themselves "purists" are not sufficient in number to support whatever their concept of "real" basketball is. If there was enough of them/us, no club would ever have gone to the wall.

So clearly there are not enough so the new NBL has to do two things; engage with existing basketball and fuel that with a new audience.

First things first. In Adelaide, we have 10 domestic clubs. Regardless of whether a 36er (or a Lightning player for that matter) already is affiliated to one (e.g. plays SBL) assign each player to a club apiece.

Maybe once a month they should attend the Sunday training day of juniors at their "club" and be active at those sessions.

I know players are constantly doing clinics at schools but why not go out to clubs we already have? It should be disturbing if a junior at a domestic SA club didn't know who Luke Schenscher is, or Adam Gibson.

In Adelaide, we have the luxury of an NBL and a WNBL team and if the women also explored the same policy of adopting an SBL club, then twice a month our juniors would be exposed to their big-leaguers.

Don't tell me that couldn't help, straight away. Perth, Sydney, Townsville also are in Adelaide's boat with an NBL and WNBL team.

Melbourne's issues as a city and as a club, are more complex.

But unless the Tigers' NBL players can be seen as the next step for kids at Sandringham, Ringwood, Kilsyth, Collingwood etc, there is always going to be a disconnect between the Victorian version of the club and its NBL entity.

It's the issue Bulleen Boomers have tried to tackle in the WNBL by changing their name to the city-embracing "Melbourne Boomers" and hopefully that will pay off - despite the misgivings of Tigers "we own the 'Melbourne' name" diehards.

But I tigress.

Re-engaging our own basketball community should be high on the agenda list for NBL Pty Ltd.

But so should growing the audience and, therefore, ensuring long-term sustainability.

Growing the auidence means finding more people to support our sport and is where sport crosses over into entertainment.

That's the dollar we are chasing, the entertainment dollar. And you can't get that if you do not entertain.

Must confess, outside of TV wanting to package our game into a two-hour timeslot (for which the 40-minute game is better suited) I cannot find a single argument against 48 minutes.

Extra value for paying customers = more time at game, more food/drink consumed etcetera.

But first, why will they want to come?

The New Zealand-Perth Grand Final was NOT a classic and when you have 13,000-plus roaring at Perth Arena, you want to give them more than a 29-29 halftime score.

The Wildcats, led by Emergiser Battery CEO Nick Marvin, may be the most pro-active organisation in terms of keeping ahead of their fans by constantly engaging them in the discussion of how best to make game-night second-to-none.

That's another step - turning the actual night back into an "event" so if you do happen to stumble across a bit of a dud game, the overall experience is still positive.

Minimising dud games though is the key and 48 minutes alone won't do that.

Some sort of NBL Competitions Committee with a few current and past coaches, current and past refs and the new/next CEO should meet and simply cut out the illegal defensive strategies rampant across the competition and which (literally) retard it.

David Stern did it at the NBA when Detroit Pistons' "Bad Boys" had their "Jordan Rules" which meant belting the living daylights out of MJ whenever the Chicago Bulls superstar came near the keyway.

Rightly, more people wanted to see Jordan's aerobatics and skill than watching him get mugged and thugged by the lowest common denominator.

Stern didn't sit by idly and watch his work get sabotaged by a win-at-all-costs mentality which figuratively slapped fans faces. The rule changes came and the game cleaned up.

The new NBL has no obligation to anyone but itself to make the game and the product the best it can be.

In season 2014-15, 48-minute games with six personal fouls should again be the norm.

Just let's not think that one step alone will turn our game back to the joy wrought by players as diverse as Rocky Smith and Leon Trimmingham.