Basketball On The Internet.

THE NBL regular season is over and it is time to unveil Basketball On The Internet’s award winners for 2013-14.

Here they are, with very little explanation necessary if you have paid attention during the season.

Most Valuable Player: Rotnei Clarke (Wollongong Hawks)

All Star Five: Rotnei Clarke (Wollongong), Chris Goulding (Melbourne), James Ennis (Perth), Brian Conklin (Townsville), Daniel Johnson (Adelaide)

Brian Goorjian Coach of the Year award: Gordon McLeod (Wollongong)

Darnell Mee Best Defensive: Damian Martin (Perth)

Stephen Hoare Best Sixth Man: Jamar Wilson (Cairns)

Kym Taylor Most Improved: Tie – Nate Tomlinson (Melbourne) & Tom Garlepp (Sydney)

Lachlan Armfield Rookie of the Year: Mitch Young (Cairns)

Bill Mildenhall Best Referee: Raoul Kirsten

It was a terrific regular season, and my first three in the All Star Five is how I expect the MVP voting to finish as well.

Clarke would not have lost too many votes to teammates and neither would Goulding but Ennis was surrounded by players in the NBL’s best team and surely would have dropped a few to Jermaine Beal, Damian Martin and Shawn Redhage along the route.

Conklin had a very strong season and stands out among a tough power forward bracket which had many candidates – Redhage, Mark Worthington, Anthony Petrie, Tom Garlepp, Mika Vukona, Oscar Forman and Alex Loughton. But none of them performed as consistently as The Conk.
 
AJ Ogilvy had the centre position sewn up for the early part of the season but AJ loses out to DJ, who had his most consistent season yet.

The bad news?

Due to budget cuts and the fact we also have to write about the WNBL, B.O.T.I. is following the lead of Basketball Australia and will not hold an awards presentation dinner this year.

Of course, any winner who calls by during the next week can still have a snag in a piece of bread, provided they can give me some advance warning.