Basketball On The Internet.

BALLSY. If there’s one word to describe the NBL’s decision to position its 2015-16 regular season games from Wednesday-to-Sunday, “ballsy” would be it.

Less training, more playing – it’s what players have sought for years.

Scheduling on Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday and Sunday nights – and Sunday afternoons – means the NBL can get through its regular season in less time.

The October tip-off reflects “a deliberate strategy to slot perfectly into the AFL and NRL off seasons, while serving up prime time sport to fans throughout the summer”, the NBL said in its release today.

Hard to argue.

The annual Preseason Blitz in Townsville will be staged from September 24-27.

Breaking from the NBL’s traditional Friday-to-Sunday scheduling – with many Breakers home games in New Zealand on a Thursday – reflects a belief in the league which previously has been lacking or absent altogether.

“Myself, the board and the newly-appointed General Manager of the NBL, Jeremy Loeliger, are committed to presenting the public, our corporate partners, and any potential broadcasters with the best product we can at the most appropriate time of year, and the most appropriate times of the week,” NBL Executive Director Larry Kestelman said.

“Making the NBL available for consumption five days a week is an attractive proposition for all of them.

“We are positioning the NBL to be the No.1 entertainment sport in Australia and New Zealand.

“We have moved to a 19-week regular season so that we’re not competing head-to-head with the traditional winter sport offering.

“Trying to accommodate an entire regular season of content into that period, using a traditional weekend schedule, would have been selling the sport short.”

FLYING HIGH: NBL action like this five days a week? Yes please.

Clearly, “selling the sport short” is not in Kestelman’s thinking.

Sure, the knee-jerk reaction - as always - will be to bag the league for daring to go in a different direction.

“Who’s gonna go out on a Thursday?” was the first question a basketball “fan” asked me when the news first hit.

Most of this sort of criticism will come from the same people who would have lambasted the league if it produced a similar draw to years gone by. It would have been: "What's new?"

Now instead they have the luxury of attacking the league for doing something different.

Will it work?

We’ll see. But again, for the first time since maybe 1979, the NBL is prepared to gamble and try something new.

It is prepared to take a risk and to back its product.

Should we be bagging that? Should we be continuing to think small-time for our product? Should we continue to be the cap-in-hand, “please-mister-can-you-spare-me-some-change?” sport?

Or should we just support a new direction? Hell, ANY direction.

Personally, I just think it’s ballsy.

Online at News Corp:

http://bit.ly/1IfpQml