Basketball On The Internet.

I HAVE two words for you to consider. Perform. Imparja.

First to Perform Media Australia, which is responsible for the live streaming that is NBL.TV and which has copped a beating from a lot of basketball people.

Some of the criticism is certainly warranted because no paying customer wants frozen screens, pixilated screens or to be at the whim of some artistic director deciding baseline camera angles are all the rage this evening.

Five-camera live broadcasts for all matches outside the games shown by Network Ten means NBL.TV is viable and important. But Perform has to, well, perform. And that means raising the broadcast quality to television standard.

That said, for someone who was overseas during last season, NBL.TV was a godsend and if, as is being mooted, the production standards will be vastly improved this season, then maybe NBL Pty Ltd should consider the benefits of that second word I threw at you – Imparja.

Let me digress for a moment.

I know I’m an unashamed nostalgia buff but one of the great things about our stars of yesteryear is how incisive they are and how simple the game is to them.

Last season when the venerable Ken Cole and a host of other former champions such as Brian Kerle were in town for his Hall of Fame induction and watched the All Star Game, their observations of the players’ strengths and failings were so to-the-point it was startling.

The same occurred a while back when members of the 36ers’ 1986 Invincibles were reunited and paraded on court for 90 seconds of the two-minute break between the first and second quarters.

Talking with someone like Hall of Famer Darryl Pearce post-game was eye-opening in how easily and accurately he could pinpoint the team’s strengths, weaknesses and issues.

The game has never been complicated for its pioneering stars. This “smoke and mirrors” and everything having to be drawn on the whiteboard has helped create an aura around the game’s coaches.

They have become like Grand Chess-masters.

Truth be told, complicating the game ruins the game. Take a look at our NBL of the past few years.

Has it been fun to watch?

When you kill the players’ enjoyment by filling their heads with so much information – analysis to paralysis – that they can no longer play on instinct, you effectively start to kill the game.

Which is why when a former star speaks, I am first in line to listen because I am about to learn more in a minute than I will in a lifetime of interviewing some of the geniuses we’ve had running our sport this past decade.

A week or so ago at the Halls/Woollacott Medal luncheon, I was seated next to Eddie Murtagh, once a temperamental and tenacious guard for West Torrens (now Forestville) Eagles in SA, grown wise with age and even a little bemused by what has happened to basketball.

Eddie was there to receive a retrospective Woollacott Medal for 1970 and, now spending a lot of his time in the Outback, had some catching up to do.

He asked me if I knew much about Imparja.

All I knew was it is the television broadcaster for remote parts of Australia.

Well Imparja is indigenously-owned and the last truly independent broadcaster in Australia.

Imparja Television broadcasts throughout most of the Northern Territory, and also to remote parts of Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania and Norfolk Island.

The total population serviced by Imparja Television is over 700,000 people, boasting the largest footprint in the southern hemisphere.

But here’s why Eddie, as a regular Imparja viewer, brought it up.

Imparja Television has the largest geographic range of any commercial television network in Australia.

It is even received on the Spirit of Tasmania Bass Strait ferries.

“Why don’t the NBL have their games shown on Imparja?” he asked me.

Not as a primary broadcaster because with free-to-air TV on Ten, the league has a national broadcaster. (For a while, at least.)

But, if NBL.TV’s production values are to indeed go up this season, and Imparja broadcasts where Ten cannot … you see where this is heading?

Why couldn’t NBL Pty Ltd talk with Imparja about replaying NBL.TV games on its network?

Eddie assured me Imparja’s advertising rates and costs were extremely reasonable.

Think about it now.

I can recall Brett Wheeler and a troop of NBL players, back in the day, going to remote parts of the Outback to run clinics with indigenous kids.

In July we were lauding Sydney Kings star Ben Madgen for returning for a second time to Northern Territory to run clinics and camps.

There is an untapped market out there. Why should the next great indigenous sportsman be a footy or rugby player?

(Probably because those sports get plenty of television exposure, even in remote Australia.)

If Perform is held to a higher standard, doesn’t it make sense to think outside the rectangle and for NBL Pty Ltd to get into some talks with Imparja about showing our national basketball competition on their television network as well?

Like I said, it shouldn’t cut across the Ten deal because Imparja goes where they don’t.

ABC-TV takes the WNBL to all parts of Australia.

Maybe it’s time for the NBL to go one better.