Basketball On The Internet.

BASKETBALL needs desperately to get a few major events onto Australia’s mainstream sporting calendar or risk slipping further off the pace and behind soccer and netball.

I nominate those two sports specifically because we will never catch AFL or NRL and, frankly, it was ill-conceived to draw their attention to our burgeoning growth in the 90s.

Once the footy codes flexed their considerable muscles, basketball went back from being a “major sport wannabe” to a minor sport and, today, is even considerably MORE minor.

I’m talking about our sport in the eyes of the “real world” and not our closed shop view of ourselves as a mighty Olympic sport with 213 participating nations.

BA, NBL, WNBL and State Association officials can stand up and spout participation numbers until the cows come home – where the hell do so many rogue cattle roam anyway? – and even point to our consistently fine international record but no-one out there is paying attention.

So we have to MAKE mainstream Australia pay attention.

We have to stage events that not only help our sport but help our sport’s mainstream profile.

During the Boomers’ “Farewell Series” against the Greek B-team, I tweeted something along the lines of the visitors being a little too reminiscent of the Argentina C-team which toured prior to the 2010 Worlds.

In other words, another sub-standard challenge for the Boomers.

That brought a response from @ShaneHeal and opened a brief discussion with @AndrewMBogut too, essentially reiterating how difficult it was at the best of times to get quality and/or full strength international teams to tour Down Under.

Let’s face it. For a European team or a South American team, it’s a lot closer, cheaper and easier to cross a few local borders for your international warm-up games, than boarding a plane bound for Australia.

In fact, the only time I can genuinely remember truly quality teams coming out for worthwhile and meaningful series against the Boomers were the USA national team in 1978 (which continued on to contest the world championship), Soviet Union tours of 1987 and 1988, and some of the pre-Olympic events before Sydney 2000. (Coming Down Under to play in the Games venue had obvious appeal.)

But for some 50+ years of preparations for World Championships and Olympics, it’s really not much to show on home soil.

Based on the (accurate) premise big-time international teams such as an Italy or Brazil will never come here with full-strength sides, clearly, two things have to occur for our Boomers to properly benefit.

The first is they need more offshore warm-ups such as they had leading in to London in places such as Spain.

The second – and this would be as much for the Boomers’ profile within Australia as for their preparation – would be the inauguration of an intranational event every two years across the country.

The “Southern Cross Challenge” as a name has potential because it is distinct, promotable and only currently being used by Basketball Victoria and Basketball Victoria Country.

I am sure these erstwhile bodies would be untroubled to share it as the name of a biennial basketball-specific event recognisable nationwide as “ours”.

In the same way that “State-of-Origin” may well be a generic term but is recognisable now nationwide as synonymous with the NRL, the “Southern Cross Challenge” would belong to basketball.

But what, in fact, would the Southern Cross Challenge actually be?

It would be the Boomers Versus the NBL All Stars in a biennial five-match series, starting in Perth, then on to Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney (with appropriate apologies to Hobart, Canberra and Darwin).

As a series it replicates tournament play and would replace any half-baked international tours, though legit teams would still be welcome, of course. It would have two immediate positives for Australian basketball.

One, it would showcase and increase the profile of our Boomers national team on home soil.

Just imagine the chance to see players such as Andrew Bogut, Patty Mills and Joe Ingles live and against a challenging opponent.

Secondly, it also would give the nation an opportunity to see the best of the talent in our own domestic national competition, through the NBL All Stars. And let’s stop calling them the All Stars and nominate their series-appropriate title – “Team NBL”.

Now before you moan and declare the Southern Cross Challenge would be just a meaningless exhibition All Stars-type series, hang onto your palamino.

Every two years leading into a Southern Cross Challenge, at the same time as the Boomers go into camp for either their World Championship or Olympic preparations, so too would Team NBL.

That’s right. Get them into camp for a week (or two) too so they aren’t running off-the-cuff “all stars” plays but some sets, offences and defensive strategies of substance.

Immediately a more serious element has been introduced to the event.

Prizemoney on the end of it also would add to the intensity and once this was established as a genuine biennial event on the national sporting calendar – and perhaps even before – a major sponsor would be far less difficult to secure.

Picture a 20-plus squad of national league players also going into camp and coached by the highest-placed NBL finisher NOT involved in the Boomers program.

If we had a “SCC” going in 2012, the Team NBL coach would have been Perth’s Rob Beveridge (New Zealand championship coach Andrej Lemanis is a Boomers assistant), with Gold Coast’s Joey Wright and Cairns’ Aaron Fearne his assistants.

You think they would take it seriously?

Let’s be honest. With more of our elite players shining abroad, high NBL content in our national team has not been the recent norm.

To have Mark Worthington, Adam Gibson and Peter Crawford selected as Boomers for London 2012 is a fillip for the league but let’s review who is left for Team NBL, and bear in mind, this is a non-restricted selection.

After all, why should it be restricted to X-amount of Aussies, X-amount of imports and X-amount of naturalised players?

If the team is representing the NBL against the Boomers, then to have credibility it would have to be the best of the players in our league.

With all due respect to Greece’s very capable junior team for the Farewell Series, you tell me if you think the Boomers would not have received better preparation playing against a team which came from this squad of last season.

New Zealand: Gary Wilkinson, Cedric Jackson, Thomas Abercrombie, Mika Vukona.

Perth: Kevin Lisch, Matt Knight, Damian Martin, Jesse Wagstaff.

Gold Coast: Adris Deleon, Chris Goulding, Anthony Petrie, Will Hudson.

Townsville: Luke Schenscher, Jacob Holmes.

Cairns: Jamar Wilson, Alex Loughton, Ian Crosswhite, Dusty Rychart.

Melbourne: Cameron Tragardh, Ron Dorsey.

Sydney: Julian Khazzouh, Jerai Grant, Ben Madgen.

Wollongong: Ayinde Ubaka, Glen Saville, Oscar Forman, Larry Davidson.

Adelaide: Daniel Johnson.

Obviously some of our Kiwi players across the Tasman such as Abercrombie and Vukona would have international duties of their own with the Tall Blacks so they most likely would have to be ruled out.

Feel free to select your own “Team NBL” but mine would look a little like this. (Yes, it’s a bit top heavy but you can rarely have enough seven-footers … although Al Westover might disagree.)

Cedric Jackson, Kevin Lisch, Cam Tragardh, Gary Wilkinson and Julian Khazzouh to start, with Jamar Wilson, Damian Martin, Glen Saville, Jacob Holmes, Alex Loughton, Daniel Johnson and Luke Schenscher on the bench.

With David Andersen, Aleks Maric, Matt Nielsen, Aron Baynes, Mark Worthington, the Boomers have a versatile spread of bigs.

Team NBL could throw Wilkinson, Khazzouh, Loughton, Johnson, Schenscher and Holmes at them, with Tragardh and Saville against Boomers “wings” Joe Ingles, Brad Newley, Peter Crawford and David Barlow.

Jackson, Lisch, Wilson and Martin would be a great match-up for Matthew Dellavedova, Patty Mills and Adam Gibson.

Actually, some of the match-ups such as Wilson-Mills would make for very entertaining viewing.

And for anyone thinking the series would be some sort of “grudge”event for Team NBL players who felt they should have been selected for the Boomers, you need to come into the 21st Century.

Sure, maybe one or two players who missed selection might have extra motivation to perform but ultimately, it’s in the Boomers’ best interest to play a bunch that wants to beat them.

Now seriously, do you really think Damian Martin, for example, would be out to hurt anyone on the Boomers team because he missed the final cut?

No way. But he’d play as hard as possible for the satisfaction of knowing his efforts have further contributed to sending the Boomers on their way in as sharp shape as possible.

When you consider can this be done logistically, it should be noticeably easier to select a quality Team NBL every two years after the Boomers 12 is announced, get them into camp and on to the Southern Cross Challenge than it would be to spend hours, weeks, months negotiating to secure a random but supposedly decent foreign national team, fly them out and then additionally meet all their ground costs. (Then you find it’s the B team and your hopes for decent gate receipts also bite the dust.)

The funds allocated for their flights could go toward Team NBL’s payments because, let’s face it, the NBL’s best should not be expected to play (or risk injury) for no financial compensation.

Whatever their club match payments are – and the NBL signs off on all contracts – is what they should also get for their five SCC games. Many players are paid until the end of the financial year so BA and the NBL – One Basketball – should be able to make this work.

As the Southern Cross Challenge became established as a biennial and therefore regular event on our sporting calendar, it should become a money spinner to boot.

You probably would expect the Boomers to win the series but it would be no poor reflection if Team NBL won occasionally as it would be a huge endorsement for the quality of our league.

In odd years, the Boomers have Oceania qualifying commitments and their battles with the Tall Blacks has its own history.

But by annually adding the NBL All Star Game in-and-around Christmas and turning it into a holiday extravaganza (see “Origin shmorigin…”), then the mid-year Southern Cross Challenge every two years, BA brings a consistency-of-event to the country’s sporting calendar.

It also shows it takes itself seriously as being able to provide value for that much-prized entertainment dollar.

The SCC would mean no more hard-sell, take-them-to-some-country-venues, kiddie “Argie-Bargie” or “We’re-Not-Really-Greece” teams to allegedly help the Boomers get ready for Worlds and Olympics. Instead, Team NBL would provide a regular, reliable opponent in a series which has a real shot at capturing the imagination and becoming something akin to Origin, over time.

Imagine if one day we could have the Southern Cross Challenge and the All Star Game spoken of and anticipated with the reverence of the AFL and NRL grand finals, the Melbourne Cup, the Boxing Day Test. Sure, it might seem a bit grandoise but why dream small?

Trust this. It can NEVER happen as long as BA and the NBL don’t come to grips with treating our sport as something important and not wallowing behind an inferiority complex stashed out-of-sight by the tedious regurgitation of participant numbers blah blah blah.

By the way, did someone say “merchandising”?

Boomers.

Team NBL.

North All Stars. South All Stars.

Step right up to get your singlets, shorts, T-shirts, warm-ups, hoodies, caps and sweat bands!

Think big. It all just makes way more sense to me than getting ready to watch the Boomers versus Tunisia in Ballarat in the lead up to the 2014 Worlds.