Basketball On The Internet.

FROM Friday's magnificent lunch - and with a brief playing interlude as Lightning produced a magnificent display of selfless WNBL basketball to snuff Townsville - fast-forward to Saturday night.

West Adelaide Bearcats is arguably the most successful basketball club in the history of the sport in South Australia.

Folks at North Adelaide, where they dominated women's basketball for decades (and won a WNBL crown in 1990) might argue the point, as might clubs wishing to parade their junior achievements.

Points no-one with any historic perspective can dispute are that Westies undoubtedly have been the State's most successful senior men's club and the most influential in the direction the game took from its earliest days.

So Saturday's inaugural Bearcats Hall of Fame inductions at the club's Port Adelaide Stadium home was something to look forward to with great anticipation.

Not only were 35 champions of the club inducted but, yet again, the evening's organisation was impeccable.

And once again, take a bow, David Spear. The man is a marvel.

After the success of Friday's Free Throw Foundation lunch, this too was driven by the erstwhile Bearcats point guard and multiple-championship veteran.

The stadium was immaculate, the club's 18 men's and seven women's championship banners hanging from the rafters in the club's distinctive black, red and white colors.

(Since seeing Boston Celtics' green-and-white NBA championship flags at the Garden, or Los Angeles Lakers' purple-and-gold championship banners at Staples Center, I've thought that looked much better and more consistent than the odd NBL/WNBL flag, with its relevant sponsor of that year slowly yellowing in the rafters. Or the SA SBL flags, which are yellow, hanging at various local stadia. Doing championship banners in the pertinent club's colors is extremely impressive. Just another thing Westies, and David, got 100% right).

Balloons, streamers and a special stage and big video screen all added up to make Port Adelaide Stadium, for the first time, really look like the place West Adelaide can call "home".

Ian Shuttleworth was excellent as the night's MC and it was magnificent to see the first people honored were West Adelaide's 1982 NBL-championship winning team.

IT WAS fitting with West celebrating the 30-year anniversary of its historic 1982 NBL championship, the club's greatest team - and the State's first national club champion - was the first to be recognised and feted.

Ken Richardson was the team's playing-coach and great sixth man, the late Mike DeGaris his bench assistant. Al Green and Ray Wood comprised the Bearcats' opening backcourt, Leroy Loggins was the unstoppable swingman, Peter Ali and Brad Dalton the musclular frontline.

Then Richo himself would hit the floor, not to mention fast-breaking fiend Trevor Maddiford and talented forward Joe Theil. Guards Greg Mules and Peter Dawe completed the line-up, manager Keith Woods handing towels to a team full of players who never stopped working.

To this day, the Bearcats - who went 21-5 to claim the regular season crown, winning by an average of 18ppg and going on to claim the title from Geelong - boast one of the all-time super line-ups.

Richardson (1979), Green (1982) and Loggins (1984-86-87) are all league MVPs, making West the only team to boast three MVPs in the one team. (For the purely South Australian reader, it was the only team with three Woollacott Medallists too, Richardson in 1975, Green in 1982, Loggins in 1983.)

That's not to mention two Olympians in Ali (1980) and Dalton (1984), or Wood, who was a dual NBL Best Defensive Player award winner at that stage.

It was one helluva team and seeing the old footage of their quick breaking, running style evoked great memories of a bygone era when everyone seemed to be trying to play that attractive, fast-paced style.

Remember, there was no three-point line in 1982 and it was a 30-second shot-clock, not that the Bearcats needed it.

St Kilda played the running game when the league launched in 1979, West had it down pat in 1982 and the Adelaide 36ers made it an art form in 1986.

Ken Cole, who ran those 1986 Sixers, followed Richardson as West NBL coach in 1983-84, reaching the grand final again in 1983 but with Andrew Campbell replacing Dalton and Richardson gone, it wasn't quite as potent.

Richardson made a point of remembering the contribution DeGaris made to the Bearcats' 1982 success and recalled he invited Cole along, late in the season, to run a few sessions as well.

"I didn't have that big an ego that I couldn't seek advice or help," Richardson told the Bearcats gathering. "And Ken Cole is a winner."

WEST IS BEST, the old banner at Forestville Stadium used to say and while many of their rivals disliked having that in their face, the truth was there was no disputing it.

It's not ironic or even coincidental that in the NBL today, Perth Wildcats (same colors as West by the way) are the most successful club and have so many great rivalries. The oldest and richest is against Adelaide, but Perth also has rivalries now with New Zealand, Wollongong, Townsville ... the list goes on, but the successful Wildcats are the constant.

So too West, which had its oldest and richest rivalry against South Adelaide, before others with Glenelg, West Torrens and Sturt evolved ... the successful Bearcats always the constant. 

Try this. The Bearcat Men won Championships in
• 1948
• 1949
• 1951
• 1952
• 1967
• 1968
• 1970
• 1971
• 1972
• 1975
• 1978
• 1979
• 1980
• 1981
• 1982
• 1988
• 1994
• 1996

That's 18 in all (so far). From 1978-1982, West won an unprecedented five straight championships. From 1967-1983, the Bearcats contested EVERY SA Championship grand final - 17 in all, winning 11. No-one comes close in SA and maybe not anywhere.

The Bearcat Women won Championships in
• 1968
• 1980
• 1983
• 1987
• 1992
• 1993
• 2007

Another fine record, twice (in 1968 and 1980) West Adelaide claiming both the Men's and Women's crowns.

In the more modern era, West has called Forestville, Bowden, Athol Park and now Port Adelaide as "home."

IN the successful period from the mid-60s, West had four constants in its Men's team - the uniquely talented superstar of his era, Werner Linde, his understudy forward Roger King, and tenacious guards Glenn Marsland and Alan Hughes.

West built its teams around the quartet, with a variety of centres from Bill Stuart, Geza Nagy, Bob Smith, Don Atherton, among others, locking down the centre role.

Until Richardson arrived from Ohio. Then it was his and his alone.

SIX of the greatest Bearcats were elevated to "Legend" status on the night.

Dual-Woollacott Medallist and 1960 Rome *Olympic selection Alan Dawe, who also was an assistant Olympic coach and a multiple SA State coach, was the first inductee.

Werner Linde, the greatest player of his time, the first triple-Woollacott Medallist, a 1964 Tokyo Olympian and 1968 Mexico *Olympic selection, the only man to score more than 10,000-career points, was next, his famous #7 uniform number also retired by the club.

Keith Miller, the inaugural Woollacott Medallist in 1947, a multiple championship winner as both West and the State coach, the 1964 Tokyo Olympic coach and the doyen of coaches, was next.

Keith also was an inaugural inductee into the South Australian Basketball Hall of Fame.

Ted Powell coached championships, managed Bowden Stadium during arguably the club's most successful time, identified talent (such as Rachael Sporn) and ran one of the best junior programs of any time period. He also was the man responsible for the formation of the WNBL in 1981, for which he was formally recognised 20 years later and awarded WNBL Life Membership.

Ken Richardson arrived in 1974 and within a year had established himself as a cut above the American imports SA was used to recruiting. This was a man who would win a Woollacott Medal in 1975, dominate in Victoria for two years at St Kilda, then return to SA in 1978 to become West Adelaide's playing-coach. In his five years at the helm, West won five straight championships.

In 1979, he was the NBL's first MVP, a year later an All Star, and in his four years player-coaching the Bearcats in the NBL, they finished fourth, second, third and first.

Rachael Sporn won Halls Medals with West in 1989 and 1993, was a medal-winning Olympian in 1996-2000-2004 and a five-time WNBL championship winner. In the WNBL, she also was its MVP twice (1996-1997) and is its all-time leader in games played, points scored and rebounds taken. Her 27 rebounds in a WNBL game with West remains the league record.

Rachael already also is in the SA Sporting Hall of Fame, her #14 uniform retired by the Bearcats.

(*Australian team did not get through the pre-Olympic qualifying tournament).

SPEECHES by the legends inevitably were all emotional and excellent.

Werner thanking Keith Miller for identifying him as a young talent was a story told with typical Linde humor. But the great man too became caught in the moment when he recalled Keith coming over every Sunday night to play chess with his father. "Those chess games were the highlight of my father's week," the OAM winner said.

Of Miller, who made the trip from Victor Harbor and is wheelchair-bound now, Linde also said that, as a coach, he knew his men.

Powell spoke emotionally of his own mentor, the late, great Gordon Clamp, who was as staunch a West Adelaide person as could ever be found.

Clamp was the man who would be getting down-and-dirty, hanging sponsors signs and logos before an NBL game, then greeting the VIPs and distinguished guests for the event, and be back tidying up the venue after the last roars were just echoes in Apollo Stadium's corridors.

Sporn thanked Powell for finding the gangly young kid from Murrayville in country Victoria and, most likely, saving her from a netball career and having the patience to develop her raw talent.

Richardson said he would take the legend honor to his grave but he did make one mistake. Humbled by the occasion, he said: "I'm no champion," preferring to bestow that honor on the many people crowded into Port Adelaide.

He got that wrong. Richardson was and remains one of the greats of SA basketball and no better example of a champion basketball player.

AND so it came to an end, the many and various hair styles and physiques of the club's many greats revisited on the video screen for a few final moments of nostalgia.

Spear and his "traditions committee" - which worked on this project for a year - had thought of everything. Bearcat juniors, sharply dressed for the evening, acted as hosts and hostesses, a young couple at the stage steps to assist the many elderly and the more frail from the West Adelaide ranks.

It was a night to remember, even for those who kicked on deep into Sunday.