Basketball On The Internet.

THERE appears to have been a one-man campaign to spank Australia's media for its lack of presence at FIBA's recent World Cup and World Championship campaigns.

Usually, I'd wait until at least two, or maybe even three people had a problem before speaking to an "issue" of such gravitas but I guess some pretentiousness does get under my skin.

The reason News Corp and Fairfax Media - Australia's two biggest outlets for mainstream media - went physically unrepresented at the two Worlds was simply because neither currently rates basketball as a sport worth any great coverage.

It's sad, but true.

When the crowd for a WNBL fixture can be 300 people, it is tough to convince a multi-media corporation to send a reporting team and photographer to the occasion, even if we strongly believe it merits both.

AAP in Australia, which services both organisations, long ago abandoned sending regular reporters to NBL fixtures, such was the general ambivalence toward our sport.

When they made that decision, neither News or Fairfax batted an eyelid - neither insisted the service should continue.

I believe Pagemasters has just duplicated AAP's position.

That should tell you everything you need to know about how relevant basketball is perceived to be by the (media) powers that be.

The NBL has had such a chequered history since reaching such great heights in the mid-90s - about two decades ago - that in many media offices it mostly is viewed as a basket case.

Yes, for the past two years Perth regularly has been filling a 12,000-plus venue but, to be brutally honest, Perth is viewed as a unique place by the media here and on the east coast - otherwise EVERYONE would know Matthew Pavlich is a megastar by now - and its success summarily dismissed as not representative.

And maybe it isn't. Put it this way, it's a hard argument to counter, even if the 36ers had a sell-out for Grand Final Game 2.

I am incredibly fortunate Adelaide has had an entrenched basketball culture since the 1950s when European migrants and American Mormon missionaries supplemented the playing stocks and made South Australia a major national player.

Forestville Stadium, the first purpose-built basketball venue in Australia, was erected here in 1952.

Apollo Stadium followed in 1969 and the Clipsal Powerhouse (now Adelaide Arena) in 1992.

Adelaide fans for a long time have been accorded the compliment as "the nation's most knowledgeable" supporters for a reason - the city has such a rich basketball history.

That's why I'm still employed as a basketball writer when a lot of other newspapers long ago farmed our sport out to general sports writers and we lost the likes of Grantley Bernard, Stephen Howell, David Hughes and a holy host of other very talented writers.

But I digress.

Basketball hasn't yet re-emerged to a time as recently as 2000 when News Corp had three of us covering matches in Sydney and Fairfax had nearly twice as many.

The sport had hold of the golden goose ... and made goose stew out of it.

In this age of the Internet and live-streaming, times have changed significantly and no, not always for the better.

I am sure Roy Ward at The Age, myself and a few others would love to have had our tickets paid to Spain and/or Turkey as did the one-man campaigner who even tried to turn Australia's lack of media presence into a topic at a post-game press conference with Andrej Lemanis.

Andrej treated the query with the shrug it deserved because he, like Brendan Joyce, knows media perceptions of basketball won't change until basketball changes.

The good news?

It is well on its way.

The NBL tips off this week and has the potential to capture the imagination while the WNBL may soon be able to claim itself as behind only the WNBA and Euroleague for quality of the competition. If it doesn't already.

Our leading men's players are infiltrating the NBA, which always sparks attention.

And we not only have NBA champions but WNBA champions, including the coach!

The Boomers and Opals are full of promise and the sport is heading back up the mountain.

The future, I believe, never has looked as bright across the board as it does today.

But unlike the taxpayer-funded ABC, mainstream media - which is a business after all - still will take a bit of convincing.

The fact News Corp and Fairfax provided substantially better online coverage of both the World Cup and World Championship than it ever previously has - and its newspaper arms across the country had access to those stories and printed whatever they saw fit - probably won't help our causes when we are putting in requests to cover on-site the next big basketball event.

Then again, as the sport grows, maybe we can return to the halcyon days of multiple reporters at international events.

But to have a media-man repeatedly pointing a lack of media presence - himself excluded of course - while ignoring the unprecedented depth of coverage is disingenuous and more self-serving than conscience-driven.

We live in a real world and in our real world, there is much yet for basketball to do.

Anthony Moore will have more important issues to address when he sits in Basketball Australia's CEO chair for the first time next Monday.

But the sports' general perception - do you remember the good old days when soccer was the national laughing stock? - definitely needs an upgrade.

Those who already willingly and happily support it, even in the middle of the night, should not be the targets of derision.

BA has work to do.

 

SPEAKING of coverage, the ABC's decision not to show the Opals-USA semi final LIVE was an incredible slap in the face for viewers.

Of all the games in Turkey, that was the one everyone wanted to see AS IT HAPPENED, not long after the result was known.

As someone on social media said: "Delayed coverage went out with hula hoops".

Apparently not for our hoops though, not when Dr Who fans or viewers of kids' programming might be disadvantaged.

And that is all the delay was about.

For all of its great coverage, the ABC bowed to Whovians and six-year-olds.

My info is it asked BA to stay "mum" on the delay too, as if in today's world people couldn't suss out they were being had.

The big plus for me of the Opals coverage was Narelle Fletcher's improvement as a commentator.

Instead of opting for colorful but tired cliches and well-worn phrases, she went for insight and did it well, her semi final call and call of the Bronze Medal game easily her best work in this field.

No fence-sitting, just straight-shooting and straight-forward observations and insights.

It augurs well for ABC's coverage of the WNBL, Rachael Sporn in the studio also across tournament developments.

The coverage was a Naismith-send.

Happy to see my tax dollar at work.