Basketball On The Internet.

TWELVE months ago, the finals of the SA State league and the Woollacott/Halls Medal dinner were a fiasco of bad scheduling and foul behavior.

Finals clashes involving teams from the same clubs at different venues just filled up Basketball SA's "Too Hard" box and the "night of nights" was a farcical mix of loud, rude, drunken and even loutish behavior.

What did BSA learn?

In 2012, we had club clashes in almost every week of the minor finals and this year's count/dinner had players rolling up drunk and throwing up BEFORE the gala event even began.

Well the good news is, finally, BSA is going to act.

Appalled at the dinner, Basketball SA Commission folk already have said the medal night format will receive a complete overhaul next year which is great news, albeit a year too late for those who wanted to hear Wayne Maidment's farewell retirement speech.

And it appears the State league - don't ask me to call it the CABL and you will see why if/when you scroll to the end of this blog - will be "rebranded and rejuvenated" next year.

Hallelujah.

They can be told.

Stay tuned for what should be some positive developments in the next few weeks.

Hopefully.

ON a positive note, the initiative by BSA Commission's Peter Sexton to invite past Woollacott and Halls Medallists to the Grand Finals was excellent and rightly universally applauded.

I even had the personal pleasure of introducing North Adelaide's 1956 Woollacott Medallist, Alan Hare, to Noarlunga City's 1990 winner, Willie Jennette.

"Big Willie, this is Big Harey. Big Harey? Big Willie." 

OK. I know I should grow up but yeah, it amused me.

By the way, the official records show Algis Ignatavicius won the Woollacott Medal in 1955 and again in 1956 and that Alan Hare won in 1957.

That's slightly at odds with the trophy Alan has at home which says 1956 Woollacott Trophy winner.

So Ignatavicius actually won in 1955 and 1957?

WHEN are the right questions going to be asked within Basketball SA about the direction our juniors are being taken by our surrogate SASI "development'' program?

(I'm just going to call it SASI for want of the correct new term because it is still the same-old same-old, which is a huge part of the problem).

Looking at the Gems and Emus squads for the Under-19 Oceania Championships, there is not a single South Aussie in the boys group.

We have three gals - Jess Good, Steph Talbot and Alex Wilson - in the Gems but our state programs cannot produce a single male?

One?

Let's have a look at the NBL team and - oops, wait, there's NO-ONE there who came through SASI.

Is there no KPI at all?

It's one thing to moan about the fall-away rate of locals from our local NBL team in Adelaide.

It's quite another to show some onions and look at how backward and self-serving the development system is, a system stuck in the Dark Ages of abuse paraded as stimulation.

MOST kids would not go within a bull's roar of the "SASI'' program were it not for the potentially negative impact on possible state junior selection.

It's hard to justify selecting kids for state who are NOT in the program over those who are and have been because of their "talent identification".

So kids accept the chance to go and parents bask in the reflected glow ... for a while.

Until they realise how boring, mundane, repitive it all is and how dictator-driven.

But then, who is going to complain when that will - and have no doubt it will - impact on their child?

Very few.

YEAH, it needs an overhaul or a return to the days when people such as Gary Fox - love him or hate him - ran the program and outsourced certain aspects so the kids could be taught by the stars of the day.

Imagine Brett Maher teaching the jumpshot or Luke Schenscher teaching post moves as opposed to the uninspiring mundanity perpetually perpetrated.

Then there's those state junior selection programs that run for months on end before teams are finally pruned. And yet they are supposed to be such a super high priority?

Even better, how about training for months, then being told you haven't made the cut, go outside and wait for your primary care-giver to pick you up while the team meets elsewhere?

How sensitive.

That hasn't scarred any impressionable young folk, has it?

Is it that hard to list the team on the BSA website later that day and not have to humiliate some kid or kids who have been busting their butts for months?

And you wonder why boys quit to play footy and girls jump to netball?

MAYBE I am too "old school" but I still think playing, as opposed to relentless training (junior club training, senior training, "SASI" training, state training, individuals...AARGH) is a much better way to hasten development.

I know that might be a bit "American" of me but so be it.

Get kids into some games. Play some school ball, some social, some serious and some club.

Yeah yeah, I can hear it already: "All those awful habits they might pick up!"

Yes - like loving the game!

SO really? Should we all call our No.1 competition the "CABL" as we are told it is?

Because, I dunno, but I reckon the championship banner doesn't say CABL at all.

The defence rests!