Basketball On The Internet.

LET me present grandstand coaches, fans, players and real coaches alike with a little NBL hypothetical.

You are the team coach and you are heading into your first preseason tournament, excited about the year ahead.

So are your two assistants as you have a clear plan for how you want your team to play.

But here's the drawback. You gather the team for its first practice game and you have to deal with the fact you haven't had a full training yet with this group.

(Not since last season anyway, and back then your personnel was different and your strategies also different to what you are needing to do now.)

One third of your personnel is excellent and at the top of their game, one third is solid and able to adapt on the run and the last third? Well, they're just barely up to the competition level.

But hey, that's what your club budget allows.

What you've had to do is tell your personnel how you want the game played. What offences you will be running, what defences you will use and what your rules are for each. But the whiteboard is one thing, the hardwood quite another.

And just to make it a tad more difficult, you actually haven't seen half your charges for six months because they live all over the country.

Let's add this to your degree of difficulty.

Every other team at the preseason has several of your dilemmas too but expectations for them are far lower at this stage of the year.

Why would that be? Because you are perhaps Dean Vickerman coaching the reigning champion New Zealand Breakers?

No.

Because you are Mal Cooper, coaching Team 9 of the NBL competition, the officials.

The expectation of your team is immediate - that every "player" will get "it" straight away and call the perfect game, even though the perfect game is now something quite different in the NBL's eyes to what it had degenerated into.

Of course, the individual trios which form Team 9 for every NBL game are very disparate groups, their abilities predicated by much of what you already have read.

As a fan, it's the preseason so you don't expect your Kings to be perfect yet. Or your Tigers. Or your Taipans.

But Team 9?

They have to be on the money or watch the howling begin. And I'm not talking about from players and coaches, but so-called "fans" who immediately are ready to toss the baby out with the bath-water and impatiently rush to judgment.

"The team which shoots free throws best will win the NBL title this year."

"These calls are so soft."

"We're going to be seeing a lot of zone this year."

Wow.

I don't envy a single person in basketball management in this country. No matter what they do, try to do, explore or trial, there is such a negative groundswell of "fans" who are just ready to pounce and start flailing their verbal or keyboard fists.

I know I'm no saint and am happy to criticise aspects of our sport that could/should be improved, but I also have learnt to be patient.

When 36ers fans want me to lynch an under-performing import, I will be trying to give the guy the benefit of the doubt for as long as possible, understanding the transition from college to pro - and pro in another country/culture for that matter - is an adjustment for any young person.

Patience.

Bear in mind, I have never been a big fan of the "necessary evil" that is umpires.

I have always felt referees in most team sports largely view themselves as a protected species, beyond criticism and scrutiny.

Well they're not. They are Team 9 and just as important as teams one-through-eight. 

So if an official is happy to read something such as: "Ben Allen missed an easy layup to win the game" (this is a hypothetical, you understand) because it is what occurred, then they should also be able to wear: "Referee Mal Cooper missed a key call in the final seconds which... blah blah."

Team 9's crew is part of the game as much as the two protagonists the fans have come to watch. Where Team 9 is unlucky - but it's the nature of pro sports - is if the crew has performed well, no-one should even remember who comprised it that night.

That said, if they screw up, that is about the only time they will see their names in print. It's unfair, yes, but it's just the way it is. The fans don't want to know Matt, Brad and Raoul did a great job. They want to know how James Ennis scored his 45.

Team 9 had a nightmarish Blitz tournament because cleaning up a game which had devolved into hand-to-hand combat off the ball - and hands-on with it - was no small ask.

"Call everything" was taken way too literally by some refs, turning some of the early games into free throw fests and robbing fans of the chance to see the main players (foul trouble) in action.

Twitter was abuzz with criticism - NATURALLY - with no allowance made for the many vagaries Team 9 has and had to deal with; just some either naive or mean-spirited expectation the officials had to all be on the same page.

Melbourne Tigers were ropable after their loss to Townsville. I don't blame them. It wasn't the Blitz's best-reffed contest. And the Tigers' first Blitz game - in Wellington against the Breakers - would assuredly NOT have prepared them for what was to come in Sydney.

But that was Saturday. On Sunday, after coach Chris Anstey had expressed his concerns at the interpretations, Team 9 made its adjustments, the Melbourne-Wollongong overtime clash one of the games of the tournament.

Like I said earlier, Team 9 doesn't have the benefit or luxury of training together five days a week. It's members come from all over Australia and aren't together on a daily basis, like the teams they officiate.

The ability levels are as broad as those between an import and a development player too. A foul call made two seconds into one game? Come on now. Would Michael Aylen call that?

When a coach says his team is a "work-in-progress", we tend to accept it at face value. Unless it's Team 9.

Apparently this week's Cairns-Perth game in Cairns was another wildly over-called preseason game but they should become fewer and fewer as Team 9 "gets it."

Teething problems? You bet. But better now in the preseason, as predicted, than once the real stuff gets underway.

My (e)mail is all the coaches and referees now have the DVD of specifics, identifying what will be called and what shouldn't.

Zones? Free throws? Aren't they already part of the game of basketball?

It's time to adjust.

And those spouting how badly this will effect Australia internationally, um, say what?

Only a handful of NBL players will be Boomers at the World Cup next year and Rio Olympics in 2016.

The NBL's responsibility is NOT to the Boomers but to its fans.

Clearly, the hands-off rule is going to encourage and reward good defence, not sloppy, lazy defence. (Just make a note if it's Damian Martin complaining about having to play good defence or older, slower, laterally-challenged defenders comfortable in laying a hand {or two} on the offensive player who are whining?)

You know who the changes will be toughest on?

The "imports" or "Boomers" of Team 9 - you know, those top-of-the-range refs who will be the ones needing to adjust when they are called on by FIBA to adjudicate international games.

And spare a thought for Coach Cooper and assistants Bill Mildenhall and Ray Hunt who also will have a gaggle of interstate evaluators to deal with - guys who will want to put their spin on how and what to call as well.

There is some shifting in thinking necessary to make the changes in the game a complete success.

The main one - coaches and players adjusting and embracing rule enforcement - is already well-advanced to where it was as recently as a week ago.

NBL officials recognising NBL Pty Ltd is a separate entity and employs them to call the game it wants its fans to see, is still, yes, a work-in-progress. The refs have to adjust.

Progress takes patience and already we have seen that rewarded with some terrific games ahead of the season tip-off. A jump in scoring from 75.9ppg last season to 91.9 at the Blitz means a new audience will start to poke its head around the door.

And that's what the NBL needs. Fresh eyeballs. And lots of them.

Said it before and will say it again. The so-called "basketball purists" are not sufficient in number to support a fully professional league in Oz. Luring in the non-committed and bringing back the semi-interested and flushing them into fully blown fans is what the NBL needs to thrive.

And thrive again, it assuredly will.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/basketball/best-will-thrive-in-new-nbl-regime-after-dealing-with-short-term-pain-says-36ers-coach-wright/story-fnii09ki-1226727875642

 

CHINA will be hoping it can break its WNBL duck today at Dandenong Stadium after following its opening 83-71 loss to reigning champion Bendigo Spirit with yesterday's 70-61 defeat by Melbourne Boomers.

Opals swingman Tess Madgen had 20 points, 7 defensive boards and 5 assists to lead the Boomers, Chelsea Poppens with 16 points and 8 boards, Bec Allen with 9 points and 10 rebounds.

Miao Lijie had 11 points for China and Liu Jiacen added 8 boards to 10 points.