Basketball On The Internet.

SLIP, SLOP, SLAP used to be the Australian answer to avoiding sunburn. Now it should be revived to describe the forever worsening situation with on-court decals (adverts) on which players routinely slip, then slide into a slop. The NBL (and WNBL) should be slapped for allowing this absurd injury risk to continue.

The amount of players slipping on decals is beyond ridiculous and the league's moratorium preventing its television callers from even daring to mention it when they see it is even more of an embarrassment.

When Lamar Patterson slipped and slid in Illawarra's loss to Sydney, his slide on the decal was so blatant that the callers were simply dumbstruck. There was radio silence. They were even afraid to acknowledge he fell over! No-one spoke!

Melbourne United against Illawarra were denied the chance to produce a game-winning shot on their final play because Cole Anthony slipped on a decal and lost control of the ball.

Thank heavens he didn't get hurt and even then, the commentary was not about him slipping. Hell no. Ssh. Mustn't say anything.

Well why the hell not?

It's a freakin' epidemic. You can see how thrilled he was.

(By the way, United last round became the first team in NBL history to lose four games by two or less points in the first six rounds of a season. They lost to the 36ers by 2, the JackJumpers by 2, the Hawks by 2 and the Wildcats by 1).

The decals are essentially for the TV viewing audience so a high-level chat with someone at AFL headquarters - also in Melbourne - would not go astray considering they digitally have their ads on display during matches.

And the commentators sitting there silently - a la Sgt Schultz "I see nutting, nutting" is comical but also extremely weak.

Do we really have to wait until someone does some serious damage as a result of slipping?

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Having always had the solution to end flopping - give the flopper's tech foul instead to his coach - here's my solution to the players congregating in huddles delaying free throw attempts.

Once the foul is called, the player taking the free throws identified, and any signalling formalities with the bench concluded, the ref simply should place the ball down on the foul-line and begin counting to five.

The shooter will be there in a second, and watch the others run to their spots after the first FT is taken. There's simply too much debate and discussion going on and all the freakin' time.

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Interesting the NBL can fly TV commentators from Sydney to Perth, Adelaide to Perth, Adelaide to Melbourne and Sydney to Melbourne ... but send a team from Sydney down the road to Wollongong?

Hell no. 

That wouldn't have anything to do with the league's feud with Illawarra now would it? 

It does mean we no longer have the joys of Matt Russell, Brad Rosen, Jason Cadee and Jo Healy calling from Wollongong where they do such a good job with their Kings bias not on show.

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There were some very unusual shots converted in NBL Round 6 and WNBL Round 2 but one of the biggest was by Cole Anthony to clinch Melbourne's match over Sydney.

Lost balance and falling out of court, it was an amazing make by King Cole but how Kendric Davis also copped a foul on it was questionable.

Yeah, he liked it.

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For those who keep score of such things, Adelaide Lightning's WNBL record was 3-4 last season when the club sacked coach Kerryn Mitchell without any meaningful explanation. 

It then appointed unheralded Aja Parham-Ammar as coach and she completed the season with a 3-13 record. Incredibly, she was reappointed for two years. OK, for the record, Lightning went 0-2 at the Townsville Tip-Off and currently is 0-3 in the 2026-27 regular season, two of those matches lost at home. In all, Parham-Ammar's record now sits at 3-18, 0-5 with "her team" this season and still considerably worse than 3-4.

The whisper though is there is a coach-in-waiting already working at the club. Who needs a resume?

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Yes, Bryce Cotton is maintaining his charge to equal the seven-time MVP record of Andrew Gaze but also in that MVP chase now you cannot discount Sam Mennenga, Will Magnay, Cole Anthony, Kristian Doolittle.

Parker Jackson-Cartwright was in the running there pre-injury too and Kendric Davis, who originally considered himself a lay down misere, has some catching up to do after ordinary performances against Adelaide, New Zealand and Melbourne. If I was Perth for Wednesday night's Ignite Cup match with the Kings, I might be a little bit nervous.

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What does American import ref Ken Widgeon see or not see? Here we have Tasmania's Taran Armstrong driving along the sideline, buffetted, clearly body-checked and fouled by new Brisbane signing Raul Neto.

What did Widgeon see? In those classic words again from Sgt Schulz of TV's Hogan's Heroes fame: "I see nutting, nutting."

Trust me. It was much much worse live. But Keanu Pinder's non-call when he hacked the living daylights out of Dakota Mathias still rates as the season's most heinous ignored call. But yes, Ken still has time on his side...

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Apologies in advance because those folks who can coach a team to a championship don't suddenly or even steadily lose their ability to coach. Check that box.

That said, it's almost impossible to follow what Justin Tatum is doing at Illawarra just now. That performance (for want of a better word ... you couldn't say "that effort") by the Squawks against the alleged despised enemy Sydney was so pathetic as to be beyond embarrassment.

Then it took the "old hands" - guys such as Tyler Harvey, Dan Grida, Todd Blanchfield, Sam Froling, Johnny Narkle - to spark something of a Squawks fightback against Brisbane.

Maybe giving the Bullets players seats at the humiliation by Sydney was not such a good idea because after watching that, they assuredly knew taking Illawarra out would not be difficult. 

And it wasn't. But who knows what is going on at the very Ill-awarra? Different starting groups, players on a roll then sitting for long periods, Will Hickey with two minutes against Brisbane.

This team so desperately leads a point guard/on-court leader that it should already be in deep discussions with Brisbane's injury replacement import Raul Neto who will be out of a gig when Arnas Velicka returns from injury.

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And for crying out loud, can someone in Illawarra's extensive coaching staff please just recommend to Sam Froling that he stops shooting free throws off his palm? It isn't effing brain surgery.

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Interesting to hear NBL all-time defender Damian Martin in his capacity as a TV caller describe Melbourne's Jacob Chance as "a quality coach".

So far the young man's coaching record at Melbourne is 4-5 and prior to that, he was an assistant at Perth, Tasmania and Melbourne. One season coaching Austin Spurs in the NBA G-League and a couple of stints as coach of the Boomers B teams in piddly Asia Cup qualifiers definitely earmarks and identifies him as a potential coach of the future.

But Brian Goorjian, Gordon Herbert, Trevor Gleeson, Josh King ... these are among our "quality coaches". We all have fingers crossed Chance too develops into a great one but let's be real. He isn't there yet by any stretch.

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Felt nothing but relief and joy for Perth's late find in import playmaker Brandon Knight as he closed out the Wildcats' home win over Melbourne United.

Still spending too much time wasting their energies on the officiating - yes Cole Anthony, we know they are super poor and inconsistent - the big call went against Melbourne's chief agitator in the endgame. (Big surprise?)

He drove, Knight stood in his way to take the charge and you can debate the call until the cows produce milkshakes, Anthony was never going to get it go his way.

That said, Brandon then became the night's shining knight when he next stuck the game-clinching jumpshot on Perth's final play.

OK. Any import prepared to give Vegemite a genuine chance - and his Aussie teammates DON'T serve it up to him like peanut butter or Nutella - and comes away liking it? He has my vote as a good guy. Thank Naismith he can also play a bit.

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Hey WNBL. We know you have new ownership/management and these are going to be the great times we one day look back upon so fondly. But truly now, if you are trying to present yourselves as a professional league amid the very elite in the world, how about your official league website update the championship ladder to THIS season, considering we are two rounds in now?

Is that too much to ask? Hey Justin Nelson. Maybe less back-patting over alleged "record crowds" and attention to detail?

Maybe get onto the work experience kid about it because, as you can see, yesterday this was what the official website STILL was carrying as its ladder. And it wasn't updated today either.

That is seriously an amateur hour effort.

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But let's not end there. Our WNBL - no doubt also purporting to be the world's No.2 league - is so clever no-one considered that a Geelong-Southside match might cause a colour clash if neither wore an alternate strip. The Flyers don't have an away uniform?

Nah. These weren't hard to tell apart.

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Thank you to old faithful and ever reliable @nblfacts for this gem from last week's Perth-Melboune clash.

The match marked the first time in 20 years that a 40-year-old in Jesse Wagstaff and a 39-year-old in Joe Ingles hit the same NBL court.

Previous occasion?

It was in 2007 when Darryl D-Mac McDonald with Melbourne Tigers faced off against Lanard Copeland who (briefly) was an Adelaide 36er.

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