Basketball On The Internet.

*FLASHBACKS, my weekly "lucky dip" where I just reach into my drawers of old Australian basketball stuff and transcribe whatever I find for you.

Opened up a copy of the glossy magazine "The Australian Basketballer" from February-March of 1986, and the first major article was about West Adelaide Bearcats. I don't believe in coincidences, just signs. So with West celebrating 30 years since its 1982 NBL title in just a few weeks, it was the obvious article to revisit.

A FAIR SHARE OF SUCCESS

LIFE was different in the Seventies. The centre of Australia's basketball universe was indisputably Melbourne. Victorian clubs such as St Kilda, Melbourne, and later Coburg and Nunawading, held all the aces in the national arena.

In the pre-NBL days, the only forum for interstate clubs to flex their muscles was the Australian Club Chamspionship. And from 1970 through to the annual week-long tournament's eventual death after the 1979 series, Victorian clubs won every championship. For the first seven years, St Kilda and Melbourne held a mortgage on the ACC title with the Saints winning four and the Tigers three. Then Coburg grabbed the '77 title from Melbourne and Nunawading broke through in 1978, and Coburg beat St Kilda in the ACC's grand finale in 1979.

Canberra Cannons? Brisbane Bullets? Forget it. Melbourne was where it was at, man.

Nonetheless, when the daring and ambitious project initially known as the National Invitation Basketball League took its first tentative steps in 1979 as a true home-and-away interstate competition, only two Victorian clubs were included - St Kilda and Nunawading.

They were joined by Canberra, West Adelaide, Brisbane, Newcastle, Sydney, Illawarra, Bankstown and Glenelg to launch the "superleague" that would endeavour to push basketball to the forefront as a major sport in Australia. Each team brought credibility to the league. Each had, or at least started with, administrative and financial stability, and each was a champion in its own right.

None moreso than the West Adelaide Bearcats who had ruled supreme in South Australia from 1967. In fact from '67 through to '79, the Bearcats contested 13 consecutive State championship grand finals, winning eight.

"West are Best" the banner used to read, and the record was on the board to prove it. The club built its program around a strong junior base which consistently produced champions. It spawned forwards such as Werner Linde and Roger King, and guards like Alan Hughes and Glenn Marsland. There are uncountable State, national and Olympic representations contained in those names.

And that quartet inevitably surrounded an American centre - recruits such as Bob Smith, Don Atherton and, eventually, the pick of the crop, Ken Richardson. As the old guard slipped quietly on to veteran status, the new breed (players such as Peter Ali, Ray Wood, Geoff Schaedel, Chris Stirling and Kym Peacock) were waiting in the wings to continue WQest's domnination of all things South Australian.

But despite the club's imposing SA status, its performances at ACC level, more often than not, left much to be desired. Certainly the club commanded respect interstate, but its consistent failures at the crunch of an ACC left its Victorian critics the pleasure of a snigger and the "big fish in a little pond" analysis.

The club appointed Richardson its player-coach in 19787 and he proceeded to steer it to a record five consecutive State championship titles, culminating in west's most successful year, 1982.

With former West women's coach and State coaching director Terry Aston acting as his bench assistant, Richardson also managed to erase West's effete reputation at national level. The Bearcats finished fourth in the NBL's inaugural season and Richardson captured the league's MVP award.

A year later he was named in the NBL's All Star line-up as West challenged St Kilda for the title, eventually succumbing 88-113 in the playoff, despite the acquisition of 206cm all-Australian centre Rick Hodges.

With the playoffs in Adelaide in 1981, West's reputation as an invincible force at Apollo Centre and the additions to the line-up of future Olympian Brad Dalton and Louisiana State University superguard Al Green, the title looked a Bearcat certainty. But with Richardson out injured, Barry Barnes and his hard-bitten Nunawading crew had other ideas in the semi final round.

The Spectres ran their race that evening, ousting the red-hot favourites 74-71. It was a memorable triumph of grit and emotion but Nunawading had nothing left for the final against Launceston the next day, and played accordingly.

West was left to lick its wounds, still one key player from the ultimate. When the club secured Leroy Loggins from Brisbane in the off-season, the final piece of the puzzle fell into place.

The Bearcats stormed to the 1982 NBL championship, with Green winning the MVP award along the way and Loggins proving his worth with a grand final MVP performance. Wood took off the Top Defensive Player award and Richardson completed a successful conversion from star to sixth man - a key element in West's dominance.

For Richardson, the mission was complete. He coached West to the 1982 SA Championship as a swansong and stepped out as the club's most successful coach in its grand history.

Dalton defected shortly after but West remained confident of a title repeat in 1983 through the recruitment of 218cm Andrew Campbell, 204cm Michael Parsons and "The King" - Ken Cole taking up the coaching reins.

But 1983 was a struggle for the Bearcats and while they made it through to the playoffs, few expected them to survive the rigours of the first round. Cole, widely regarded as the premier motivator of men in Australia, once again fulfilled his pre-season predictions and West lined up to defend its crown against the Canberra Cannons. In a final which proved a seesaw ride for spectators, with fortunes fluctuating wildly, Canberra outlasted West 75-73.

Already in SA, the talk of having only one NBL club was growing. While most clubs in Australia could only drool over West's NBL record (fourth, second, third, first, second) in SA, many could see the writing on the wall.

Cole retrurned to the U.S. leaving Peter Ali the playing-coach chores for the 1983 State championship which West, with its NBL line-up intact, lost to the Terry Aston-coached North Adelaide Rockets.

By the time Cole made it back for the 1984 NBL season, West had lost Campbell to Canberra and Loggins back to Brisbane. In their place the club had managed to recruit 208cm American Donnie Gipson from another SA club, Woodville, on a "we clear him to you for the NBL - you clear him back for the SA championship" basis. Inside two years, the bottom had fallen out of the Bearcats.

While Cole gave the promising Mike McKay starting duties, at the time it appeared more a move borne out of desperation than faith. And the club's player reserves hit desperation point when Cole himself, at 40 and well out of condition, suited up for a couple of NBL games.

Early into what would the Bearcats' first and only losing season, Green and Gipson suffered the sidelining wrath of the NBL Tribunal after an on-court melee in a match against Newcastle. The end of the season could not come soon enough for West Adelaide. At the same time, the composite Adelaide 36ers squad was making the playoffs for the first time; the end of West Adelaide as an NBL club was in sight.

The club's top administrator Gordon Clamp, who was as much at home shaking hands with leading business executives as hanging up their advertising banners on the mornings of home games, made a valiant effort to forestall the inevitable. But he was not only fighting a battle to convince State administrators that West was still viable, but also fighting the same battle within his own club.

It was one of the club's most unfortunate episodes that its decision to pull out of the league and join the 36ers' program for 1985 was reached at a club meeting which Clamp, through illness, was unable to attend. He read of the decision in the newspaper the following day and West lost its most dedicated  and professional executive.

But in truth, West was in dire straits. After playing off in a record 17 consecutive State championship grand finals and winning 11, in 1984 it missed the playoff top four in SA for the first time in 29 years. For West Adelaide, fifth place in SA after such a rich and proud tradition, was the equivalent of the bottom of the barrel.

"It was pretty hard to go out and watch the finals," said Ali. "It just seemed unnatural that we weren't out there." 

Don't shed any tears for the Bearcats. Last year they "rose from the grave" and made it almost all the way back, losing the State championship grand final to Sturt.

And they finished the year winning the Cathay Pacific Cup in SA. The Cup season is, admittedly, of minor significance but it was a major triumph for West considering veteran Ray Wood was absent and Mike McKay injured. Essentially West won it with rookies and a rookie coach, John Wright.

West Adelaide may not be an NBL champion anymore but the spirit of success is back, alive and kicking. And these days, the Adelaide 36ers are its beneficiaries.