Basketball On The Internet.

AN NBL All Star representative team, probably to be coached by Boomers coach Andrej Lemanis, looks likely to play the Chinese national team in China in May.

The proposed three-match series also would open the door toward a Chinese team competing in the NBL as a 10th club from as early as the 2017-18 season.

Multiple-NBL Championship winner and Coach of the Year, Brian Goorjian, who currently is based in China, would be targeted to coach that nation's NBL entity.

It is all part of exciting NBL plans to break into Asia in a concerted manner, and not repeat the mistakes of the flawed Singapore Slingers experiment.

GRATUITOUS PICTURE OF YAO MING: Apparently a pretty decent Chinese player back in the day and necessary to trot out at the mere mention of any NBL-Asian expansion, a bylaw put in place by the oft-lamented former League Commissioner, Rick Burton.

NBL clubs have been asked to make their players available for the short May tour where our All Stars would play Team China.

Lemanis, who will coach Brisbane Bullets in the 2016-17 NBL season, is earmarked to run the All Stars, giving him a chance as Olympic coach to have a closer look at some of Australia's second-tier players behind our NBA, US and European contingent.

Hosting an invitational tournament in Australia for major foreign sides also is on the NBL agenda, the league conscious the Philippines too is a basketball-crazy Asian nation.

NBL General Manager Jeremy Loeliger is on the record saying he would like to see teams from places such as China and the Philippines competing in Australia's competition "in the not too distant future".

And no, not just in some "Champions League" type of end-of-season tournament but as fully fledged NBL clubs competing in the home/away format.

The proposed Chinese team is linked to a previous plan to add an Asian player to each of the NBL's nine rosters as a 12th player. The League's proposal to move from two imports to three next season does not impact the Asian player idea which has gone quiet of late as it is.

The three imports most likely all would be from North America.