Basketball On The Internet.

BASKETBALL Australia needs to get on the front foot and promote the living hell out of Abby Bishop winning the WNBL's MVP award.

What a story Abby has with the adoption of her sister's daughter Zala and taking on single parenthood.

Parenthood is challenging enough and surely doubly so if you're doing it alone.

And she took this on due to the beauty of the person she is.

To do that and then be the most dominant player in the league, in a year when the WNBL boasted players such as Penny Taylor, Cappie Pondexter, Suzy Batkovic, Kelsey Griffin etcetera, makes her's one of the outstanding feel-good news stories of the year.

BA should be all over New Idea, Women's Day and all the TV talk shows and have them all over Abby the second she gets back from Hungary, if not sooner.

Can't you see that New Idea cover already?

Amazing Abby in her light blue Canberra Caps uniform, basketball under her arm and with happy, smiling Zala bouncing on her lap?

It sells itself.

Headline: "Is this single mum the best women's basketball player in Australia?"

You can't buy promotion like that.

Netball is the master of it. But what mileage will we, as the sport of basketball first and the value of women's sport second,  get out of this terrific story?

Zero, unless BA strides strongly and swiftly to the doors of magazine and TV show editors.

I didn't think either of them (basketball or women's sport) had any mainstream traction in the wake of the Opals' sensational FIBA World Championship and why, again, that wasn't touted and thrust in the faces of media types baffles me.

The story of how Brendan Joyce took a young team decimated by injury to a Bronze Medal, the sub-stories of Penny Taylor and Erin Phillips' twin returns, Marianna Tolo's emergence etcetera - this stuff writes itself and is ALL positive.

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS: Australia should know who Marianna Tolo is.

We have enough rubbish and a tainted-enough image as a sport in so many quarters that when something like these opportunities come knocking on our door, we can't be in a back room doing the laundry.

And if they didn't come knocking, BA should be out knocking on doors.

Come on now. "Is this single mum the best women's basketball player in Australia?" is an absolute winner.

Over to you, BA.

Online

http://bit.ly/1EtxFmS