Basketball On The Internet.

THE scariest aspect of the fact a WNBL club as old, established and successful as Adelaide Lightning is teetering on the brink of extinction, is Basketball SA's complicity in the demise.

Yes, there still is hope Adelaide will hit the hardwood in 2015-16, despite even the Australian Sports Commission's WNBL review recommending Basketball Australia find a new entity to ensure the competition retains at least eight teams.

That's happened, of course, with South East Queensland's new entrant, which continues to offer huge monies, inflating a false economy that will lead the league down the same path of destruction the NBL already so often has ploughed.

Learn from history?

Not basketball.

BSA has botched the retention of the Lightning so appallingly that if anyone outside the sport's inner sanctum cared - you know, Government agencies who provide grants, corporate supporters with clout ... that kind of thing - heads should and would roll.

But in this instance, BSA will get away with its glacier-like pace, indifference and/or lack of foresight in reacting to Lightning's obvious plight because, quite simply, not enough people outside the sport (or even inside it for that matter) give a flying frapdoodle.

In fact, BSA seems more interested in having an "exit strategy" that will keep it looking pristine should the feverish, belated attempts to get Adelaide up for 2015-16 fail.

I spoke with an extremely high ranking BSA official last week who gave me a glimpse of that strategy when I reiterated to him - notice it's mostly men making decisions about women's sport - his state body has an obligation to provide an elite pathway for girls to the WNBL.

"Do we though?" he asked me.

"If the Sydney Flames fell over, for example, would it be Basketball NSW's obligation to ensure the state has a WNBL team?"

Ah. So there you have it. Apparently it ISN'T a state association's job to provide pathways after all.

I bet BSA Board members, sitting around the table with their slices of pizza and glasses of red, celebrated with unrelenting joy when someone came up with that exclamation.

"Brilliant! We can say: 'We did our best' but in the end, it's not our obligation to ensure there's a WNBL team out of SA," one most likely chirped and burped, to a chorus of "Yays".

Wow.

Just, wow.

Where's the WNBL's initial founder Ted Powell when you need him?

Powell chaired the inaugural meeting of clubs which led to the league launching in 1981 - without ABC-TV coverage, but I digress - and once took his beloved West Adelaide club before the Equal Opportunities Commission when he found the Bearcats were spending more money on their men's team than their women's.

Equality?

Forget it.

All BSA cares about is getting out of this mess with its reputation intact.

SPAWNING AN OLD ERA: Rachael Sporn, playing for West Adelaide back in the day.

Initially, it wanted to blame previous Lightning owner Vince Marino for "not letting us get started on a new strategy" after he'd returned the WNBL license to BA.

Bulldust.

To give the statutory nine months notice of his intent to step away, Marino informed BA in July he no longer could afford to keep and fund the club.

He did it which meant, unequivocally, this was no bluff or attempt at grandstanding. As of the final siren on 2014-15, he was out.

That means BSA has had SINCE JULY to pick up the baton and get the ball rolling for a proper hand-over from Marino to the next ownership consortium.

Yes, I agree BSA is not obliged to field a WNBL team. But it sure as hell is responsible to ensure there IS a team.

Marino did nothing to hinder BSA getting on with finding new owners or a new strategy for the club. Why would he? He loves the club. You don't pour in some $4million-plus over 8-9 years and not bleed Lightning red.

Next BSA strategy?

"BA didn't inform them in July that Marino was a definite non-starter for 2015-16."

Sorry. Bulldust. At the very least, BSA has had since October to get a new plan/strategy underway.

It.

Did.

Nothing.

The first time the state association got off its collective backside was when Marino, frustrated at BSA's persistent intransigence, publicly announced he had relinquished the license, effective at the end of the season.

Marino desperately had wanted to be able to tell his coaches, players and staff that while he no longer was going to own the club, there was a new plan in place.

Does that sound as if he was hindering BSA from getting cracking?

Marino's public declaration his time was over sent BSA into panic mode.

CEO Mark Hubbard, who one suspects fantasised that Townsville Fire coach Chris Lucas would ride back into Adelaide in his white knight armour and save the day, was suddenly talking about hooking a university into the program.

Lightning stalwarts such as multiple-championship winning coach Jan Stirling and iconic superstar Rachael Sporn were "recruited" to put some sort of face on a club which now, for all intents and purposes, had ceased to exist.

Local businessman and troubleshooter Mark Williamson was hired as a consultant to rally corporate support to a brand which, while well-established, still had no management.

My information - and it is reliable enough to write here - is another basketball operation, most likely the NBL's 36ers, offered to take up the license if BSA would forward an interest-free $300,000 loan for 12 months.

Since losing control of Adelaide Arena and no longer being financially responsible for either the state's NBL or WNBL teams, BSA has accumulated a tidy seven figure-plus sum in the bank.

An interest-free $300,000 loan, to be paid back in 12 months to not only keep Lightning going but with a management and infrastructure, should have been a no-brainer.

Instead it was a "no deal" because BSA is more interested in boasting a healthy bank balance than fielding a WNBL team.

I believe - but this one is second-hand - the 36ers also offered a "white knight" alternative which BSA bungled, before the NBL club wiped its hands of any further involvement when the association tried to co-opt one of its sponsors.

At some point, it must have occurred to BSA that Lucas, an Adelaidian at heart and former Lightning coach, would NOT be leaving a championship-winning club he helped rebuild from the ashes.

Would you?

And would you leave Townsville to come into this morass?

Williamson, Stirling and a few other hardy Lightning lovers - including BA CEO Anthony Moore - continue to work frantically in the background to save even a watered-down version of the once proud Adelaide club.

But during BSA's indolence, indifference and ineptitude, it also has lost the Lightning name, which still belongs to Marino.

He would have given that IP back for nothing if BSA had been ready with a plan to follow his departure.

But BSA has been so very clever, it not only currently does not have a team but even if it did, it would have no name for it.

We can sometimes allow ourselves to believe women's sport has made great strides and inroads. But we never should forget in the end, it's mostly boys clubs which determine the fates of women in sport.

BSA's performance in this fiasco is living proof.

But hey. The association's reputation is intact, right?

MORE major movements today with Bec Cole retained and Alice Kunek regained at Melbourne Boomers.

And South East Queensland has thrown former Adelaide Lightning and Townsville Fire guard Amy Lewis a career-lifeline.