Basketball On The Internet.

THERE can be no real reason Basketball Australia wants to annexe the SEABL competition – Australia’s oldest interstate league – other than to shore up its perilous finances.

What other reason could there be?

Because BA wants to show those rebel NBLers how it should be done?

They had that chance with the WNBL.

Since last year giving the NBL the option to demerge – which it naturally and understandably gleefully leapt at (not knowing how many of BA’s existing contracts were just terrible business deals the league then would be lumbered with and retarded by) – the federation finally can see just how much of a hit it has taken without having the nation’s highest profile basketball competition under its auspices.

Its stewardship of the WNBL pretty much was a shoe-string token operation, highlighted by widespread and justified criticism of the season concluding without so much as an awards presentation lunch, let alone a dinner.

I have said it before and will say it again. Whatever merits our federation has in running national programs, national teams and national tournaments, it is dreadful at running and administrating a six-month long weekly national competition, be it men, women or, worse still, men AND women such as the SEABL.

And that league has conferences!!

For a start, without the NBL, the $100G each club had to pony up for “participation” means that $800,000 of “annual easy money” no longer sits in BA’s coffers.

Marketing manager Aaron Flanagan, whose appointment dates back to Larry Sengstock’s time as BA CEO, has resigned, effective mid-June at the conclusion of the imagination-capturing and public-enrapturing Sino-Australia Challenge.

My e(mail) is Flanagan is unlikely to be replaced, meaning BA will save money (and a fair bit) considering it no longer will be paying out for his weekly interstate commute.

Without the NBL to administer, stakeholders have been asking pertinent questions about BA’s current staffing levels.

The general mood of disquiet at BA’s performance seems justified but sad at the same time.

What would it take to whip our game’s controlling body into streamlined and efficient shape?

Very little, I would think, if (finally) the right CEO was appointed.

But even when BA gets something right, it gets it wrong.

For example, its Aussies Abroad section at its much-improved website genuinely is an asset and a service which makes keeping up with the progress of our players overseas so much easier.

But while BA recently was lauding Abby Bishop’s efforts for Pecs as it finished runner-up in the best-of-five Hungarian Championship Series, it completely overlooked Louella Tomlinson.

Louella, who comes from one of Australian basketball’s first families, started in the same series for PINKK-Pecsi, the team which actually beat Abby’s team in the Grand Final series.

(Can you hear Homer Simpson slapping his forehead and groaning “D’oh!”?)

The fact BA overlooked Louella may have been because it was in such haste to praise Abby, considering its recent PR disaster regarding its ridiculous baby policy which led to Bishop withdrawing from the Opals’ World Championship squad.

That doesn’t make BA's omission right by any means as that entire “baby policy” BS remains a large stain on the federation.

If Abby Bishop is rated among the 12 best players to represent the Opals in Turkey at the World Championship this year, then BA should have shifted heaven and earth to accommodate her.

To miss such a perfect PR opportunity is typical BA.

It managed to turn what should have been a federation’s lauded support for a young woman going above and beyond the call of “aunt” to willingly take on the role of motherhood and avert a family crisis, into a brazenly blinkered disaster.

But then, when you go back to the fact BA is starting to feel the pinch financially and re-examine a policy which has been unnecessary for some 60-odd years, you can view it cynically as just another cost-saving avenue.

BA did a great job – under Sengstock, Di Smith-Gander and a handful of others – to salvage and save the NBL in 2009.

Salvation is one thing, administration quite another, especially with so many other priority considerations on BA’s plate.

The NBL could not wait to escape the federation’s clutches, WNBL clubs are completely underwhelmed and the SEABL’s first question should be: where will every penny we are expected to give BA actually be spent?

Before it has that answer, it should stay true to itself as this nation’s longest-running interstate basketball competition.

Perhaps revisiting operating as the NBL’s feeder competition also should be considered.

As the premier winter basketball competition in the nation, the South East Australian Basketball League should consider a more nationally embracing new name too – and Continental Basketball Association sure wasn’t it.

But imagine the “Aussieleague”, with its rich SEABL history, not only staying the premier winter comp but acting for the NBL in a similar matter to how the D-League operates for the NBA.

NBL franchises could send their players to second-tier clubs for winter “seasoning” and, better yet, potential new clubs would have to play Aussieleague first.

In fact, Aussieleague could throw up some of its existing clubs as potential NBL candidates.

Imports could be trialled in Aussieleague outfits.

Just some random ideas. But to me they just make more sense than throwing in with a federation which has its record on the board for this type of activity under “Catalogue of Catastrophe”.

TOMORROW: And now for the WNBA...