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| Bridgey's Business Archive; BBL pro Andrew Bridges column | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 6 2007, 11:43 AM (591 Views) | |
| Bada Bing | Jul 6 2007, 11:43 AM Post #1 |
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El Crack
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04 june - welcome everyone Well Badaball has been relaunched so I figured it must be time to write my first column. Over the last year or so Bada has been running the site almost single handedly and as he developed the site he decided for some reason unknown to me and probably him he asked me to write a regular column, may be all those drugs for his dodgy back had gone to his head. So here we are, I have absolutely no journalistic experience and no real idea of how the column will develop but I reckon its time to give back to the basketball community so I’m going to give it my best shot, I’m not saying its going to be good but hopefully it will do. This time of year is usually very quiet in British Basketball because clubs and players don’t commit to deals meaning there is nothing to tell but with the BBL working on predominantly 1 year deals its not suprising. In fact if you look across Europe the only deals announced at this time are multiple year contracts, 1 year deals don’t usually get done until July or August. If we put the players to one side though there are many things happening, the main ones being Are Chester in or out? Are any other teams joining the BBL What is going on with the Malin review So at some point in the near future I’ll give my thoughts on these topics and any others that come up and if anybody has any topic that they want me to give a players opinion on please e-mail badaball and I’ll reply in the column. The first topic will be my recent visit to Barcelona to visit Sulli and my first ACB experience, which did not go as planned but I’ll leave that to until next time. Bridgey 19 JUNE CATALONIA DREAMING After months of trying to match schedules (Ed - you mean looking for cheap EasyJet flights) I finally made it to Barcelona in May. It didn’t happen during the season for many reasons but mainly because we play twice a week (more of that another time). So I was ready for an amazing ACB Play-off experience mainly because Bada and co can’t get enough of it and basically he never shuts up about it. I figured this particular series would be better with Robert Archibald and Andy Betts both playing who I’d met before but judging by their reaction I don’t think they remembered me! Having said that, it was a few years ago though, and besides I was too busy thinking about getting to see the young talent that is Ricky Rubio. I’ve seen him on TV a lot but I wanted to see him in person and in practice to see what he was really like. Could he really really shoot? What was his vision like and was he really that quick etc. You do see it in games but you can really see in drills and controlled scrimmages exactly what he’s got. One thing he will have pretty soon is experience because when he turns 21 he’ll have 5 years ACB knowledge if he does go to the NBA. Now as I wasn’t going during the BBL season I decided to book my tickets in advance, so myself and Sulli gut on the phone (this happens 3 or 4 times a week anyway). At the time of booking, Badalona is in 5th place and in Sulli’s opinion not playing too well, Barca have just past them and also Malaga, after their dreadful start (sorry Bada) have just pulled level with them. So we conclude that Badalona will probably be on the road for the 1st game and at home for the 2nd game, so I book my flight for Sunday afternoon to arrive for a Sunday evening game. Perfect! Well not quite! From there it all went wrong. Badalona went on a tear, winning around 9 out of 10, including a thumping of Real Madrid, in order to finish 3rd in the ACB, which is great for them and I’m especially pleased for the Brits, in BBL terms its like London United winning it all, based on last years BBL final standings and budgets. After all, Badalona have one of the smallest budgets in the ACB. Then there was a good chance that they would be playing Girona, which I’m told is an hour away from Barcelona so we would have been able to go to that game even though it was on the road but even that didn’t because they passed Gran Canaria on the very last day! That was a 3 hour flight of course so that didn’t happen! Never mind I’d still get to see a couple of practices.............. So off we went to Barcelona to be met at the airport by Sulli’s better half as he was playing in Gran Canaria and wouldn’t be back until late that night. So we had a great day looking around Barcelona and then headed to their local which I thought might be some cool Spanish bar...... It was nice, it was in Spain, but it was an O’Neil’s! Only a group of Brits would do that.... great food though. Sulli was still working his way back from injury when I went out and logged a DNP in the game (he’s since made it back into the starting line up) and he wasn’t happy and just to top it off, the weather was bad in Madrid where they connected flights and the team’s flight couldn’t take off. I found this quite funny but even though we’re great mates, Sulli’s a big guy and even I didn’t dare take the piss. (Ed - Bridgey isn't a Geordie, he's from Chesterfield) So when he does eventually get back, he gets changed and drags me to some nightclub, I was putting up a fight honest................ I thought I’d give my thoughts on the differences that I still managed to pick up between the ACB and the BBL after seeing them both first hand. Firstly we don’t need to discuss on court because I don’t think you’d find any sane person giving this one to the BBL! I mean Andrew Sullivan dominated the BBL two seasons ago and last season was asked by his coach to be a role player in the ACB, enough said without even talking about the other world class players in the Spanish league! Second is accommodation. Each player get there own place with most of Badalona’s foreigners living a five minute walk from the beach. This is unheard of in the BBL with clubs putting multiple players in houses or having them live in hotels. But if you put this in context although I’m sure everyone would prefer there own place, players that have come to the BBL over recent years have on the whole, been straight out of college and therefore coming straight out of a shared living. I guess at that level sharing a house isn’t that big of a deal - in fact its probably what they’d prefer. However over recent years, the Eagles have given veteran players with families their own places and I know Sheffield have done the same so it does happen in the BBL but its just not a given. Cars - each Badalona player had their own car with their team sponsored by Peugeot. Across the BBL I’m not sure what goes on, but at Newcastle we’re lucky to be sponsored by Honda, so the policy was pretty much if you could drive, you got a car. At least from a Newcastle against Badalona point of view things appear pretty similar car-wise! Although with regards to the rest of the BBL I just don’t know..... Housing and car situations are not that far apart in my opinion and of all the things involved in running a club I reckon these two thing are the closest aspects between the two leagues and therefore present the smallest gaps for the BBL to bridge. Considering this is the 2nd biggest league in the world and from what I’ve heard from players that have played in some smaller European leagues, the BBL actually easily out does some of them in terms of accomodation and cars. Someone told me that at one team in Europe he lived by himself in a run down apartment, didn’t get a car, none of his team mates would give him a ride so he had a 30 minute walk to practice and 30 minutes back........twice a day. No thank you - I wouldn’t want to be in that situation. Obviously huge differences do exist between the leagues, not least flying and travelling the day before games compared with maybe a 5 to 8 hour bus trip on the day of the game depending on which team you play for back in the UK. In Spain, travelling with physio’s, doctors and masseurs is commonplace but none of these are commonplace in the BBL. But here’s the kicker - owning your own venue................ Badalona have the stadium built for the 1992 Olympics, so have unlimited access for practice and games, so they can do either whenever they want. Now I don’t know if they bought it or were given it by the city but I would bet that if they did buy it they got a great deal. Could you really imagine that happening in this country? Are London United or Capitals going to get given a venue from the 2012 Olympics? I doubt it very much, everything about this country is about what you can get for what you’ve got from the Government down. Even here in Newcastle I was told we’ve got five brand new venues with sprung wooden floors and yet each want £40 per hour for basketball. £80 for a training session - are you kidding me? So instead it sits empty. That’s why England will never have an abundance of world class athletes - we’ve got the talent but we can’t bring it through. The Government and Local Councils would rather have venues empty than charge a reasonable rate, so its empty and who then picks up the bill? Me and you through our taxes. ONLY IN BRITAIN! Anyway rant over....... What I would suggest is that the League needs 12 venues built around the country along the lines of the EIS in Sheffield with a few changes that teams can use for training, games and their community work. Some teams like Newcastle, Milton Keynes, Scottish Rocks and maybe Plymouth wouldn’t need game venues because of their arenas but a smaller practice facility would help them build a stable financial platform. My idea for the venues would be that when a platform is built then teams then look to move to arenas when secure because what the venues will do for clubs is provide constant cash flow. This is what teams have in the ACB and around Europe. So in short, in my opinion, the BBL needs its own practice facilities which leads to cash flow which in turn leads to everything else, I know its easy to say but its what we’ve got to do. Quite how we do it, I don’t know, but its something the basketball community has to figure out if we ever want to get to ACB level. Sorry for the delay but I was promised a trip to the ACB finals if Badalona had made it and I might have had some basketball to talk about, maybe next year. |
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| Bada Bing | Aug 22 2007, 10:54 PM Post #2 |
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El Crack
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06 JULY BBL ON THE UP? Bada you are the MAN! People that don’t know me or Bada have no idea how much it pains me to say that but big respect to you for doing all your stuff on the site and still holding down a job (well when you get off the sick anyway). (Ed - Nice of you to say so Bridgey but only because of help of contributors and especially my top editing team eventhough they are still training. Could do with some sponsorship if anyone reading this can back us!!) I thought that this article lark would take about an hour a week, how wrong was I. I spent the last 2 hours just reading everyone else’s stuff, UKTV Slam, Eurobasket and Badaball. There’s been a lot going on recently, Chester are still in with a small name change, Everton have joined the league, fixtures are out and Guilford are playing ULEB, in my opinion all positive things but each has the potential to go wrong shall we say. I’m glad Cheshire are in, they’re part of the BBL furniture, Mike Burton was the Chester Jets in the public domain but I’m sure he had help in the background and I don’t want to offend anyone or diminish what they might have done but Mike stepping away from he Jets might be the best thing that could happen for the long term future of the club. I’m guessing that they’re going to have a committee take care of things now which will share out the responsibilities and therefore share out the pressure, so in the future if someone has to step away from the club for personal reasons they’ll be other people there to carry on with the club. And it wouldn’t be the same without a trip to the Northgate on the calender. Everton Tigers are here, great that new clubs are joining, from what I’ve read everyone says that the BBL needs to expand, then new teams come into the league and people run them down saying they won’t be competitive and why don’t we promote clubs that exist in division 1. Well Everton are in and they won’t have the biggest budget, they won’t have the best venue and they probably won’t win the league but whenever you set up a new business or club you don’t have the biggest budget, you probably run it from your spare room and you don’t expect to be the market leader straight away but when you start fresh you aspire to be the best and I’m sure that what Everton are doing, lets let them get on with it and reassess in 3-5 years. Fixtures are out, I knew what was coming and have been thinking about it for the last month or so, I don’t like the system. I believe that its come about this way for purely financial reasons, teams want a set amount of home games and don’t want to many away games from a business point of view, other than that there is no reason for the 3 game series. The system can only be based this way if it runs for 2 years with the exact same teams so that fixture can be reversed perfectly so in effect the League winner will be the team with the best record after 2 years. This isn’t going to happen because at the very least Brighton are in the year after next and maybe other teams, so the league winner next year is going to be effected by there fixture list because I just don’t see 1 team that is going to be that dominant that it doesn’t matter. For example if you only have to play at Leicster once you have an advantage, that’s the hardest venue to play at in the whole league hands down, Bletchley which is another tough place to play what if you only play there once and even then if you play them after Christmas you going to be playing at there new arena and I’ll bet that’s a better place to play than Bletchley. What if Newcastle only travel to Plymouth once and the Rocks go twice its unfair on the Rocks, so which ever tam does win the league the fans of other team will belittle the achievement based on the fixtures played. It should have stayed at four games against each team, teams should have been able to manage 6 more home games if they’re worried about losing money they need to step up and do a better job, if new teams come in which they probably will then it will have only been for 1 year and next year we can go to 1 home and 1 away game against each team. I don’t think home and away would have worked this year just not enough teams, people will argue that there would have been more time for practice but without owning there own venues teams wouldn’t have done it, they’d have given an extra couple of days off to save money on training costs. We should be playing 4 times this year and 2 times next year with 3 game playoff series. Guilford are in Europe, its great news for the BBL, a lot of people have asked me why Newcastle aren’t playing in Europe this year, I think Paul has made the right decision, he wants to play in Europe there’s no doubt about it and I’ve spoken to him directly about it, he’s preparing for the worst case senario, what if he draws 5 teams from eastern Europe, and what if he gets given a massive fine for something he has limited control over, he wants to be in a position to deal with any problems that occur. Now as a player I don’t care about that, lets just go for it, it’ll be fine but as a homeowner I care what if he gets a massive fine then comes and tells me he can’t pay me this month, I then can’t pay my mortgage and so on for everyone else that works in the office, so I think in the grand scheme of thing he made the right choice because if I understand it correctly the play off winners get the option of the spot, which is standard ULEB policy across Europe. Back to Guilford though, I genuinely hope they succeed, they got a good draw in terms of travel and finance, they’ve got multiple travel options in London and don’t go to the far ends of Russia. People are also saying they’re going to get walked all over every game, I doubt it, they’ll probably be in at least 4 of the home games and 3 away games its just about taking there chances to win but the most important thing for the club and the league is that they make it through the campaign irrespective of what happens on court because if they do that the reputation of the BBL and each club in it is enhanced. So everybody in the BBL needs to get behind them because what they do indirectly will effect your club, and if they survive the year who knows we might get 2 or 3 spots in Europe the year after THE BBL ONWARDS AND UPWARDS |
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EuroLeague Women because women's basketball is the most important thing in life after family and good health! | |
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| Bada Bing | Nov 1 2007, 11:07 AM Post #3 |
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El Crack
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23 aug PRE SEASON PREPPING I’ve been back in full training since the start of August and for me that means weights three times a week, basketball every single day while for the last week pounding out the miles on the treadmill plus a couple of scrimmages For the last eight months I’ve been fortunate enough to be working out at the English Institute of Sport(EIS), Big Dunc has been away with GB so its been left to former 400m star Jared Deacon to kick my ass. This is going to extend my potential to play by about five years I reckon. They cleared up all my nagging injuries and more importantly strengthened my knees and increased my ankle/achillies flexibility so I am now totally pain free, not something that can be said for most basketball players(no doubting it concrete floors all through juniors is not the way to go). There focus is core strength and from there they’ve adapted sports specific exercises to build strength that you need in games, so for basketball its lots of explosive lifting, like you see at the Olympics(only with a lot less weight). Basketball is comprised of lots of drills for two hours at time and every player hates doing drills they just want to play. I’d certainly question anyone that said different but it simply has to be done. The perfect combination of perfecting old skills and working on new ones that might be needed by your team during the forthcoming season. I have to admit that I’m not really one for lots of scrimmaging. I will play with my old friends more than anything, I just find it fun and its always light hearted and the biggest risk is actually injury. Of course friends know not to do anything stupid, and as you play basketball every day for 9 months I find that not playing helps to build my hunger and desire for the new season. I can’t wait for next Tuesday when it all kicks off formally for us as a team here in Newcastle. From the club's perspective both Northern Rock and Nike are now on board - two blue chip companies which hopefully will not only drive our club forward but might encourage other companies of similar stature to back the other teams or even the league itself. Elsewhere, GB are off and running. While they lost a few in the warm up’s it was really no big deal and credit to them that they won when it mattered. If they continue to pick up wins then no one will care about previous games. In truth it’s not about individual performances and only the result. If they win, they win - end of story. Guys have totally different roles on the national team of course. I didn’t actually go to the game (I will be in Edinburgh though) but apparently Betts and Archibald were killing and getting the ball on consecutive trips down the floor. Did that happen at Badalona......................? This all takes time for players to adjust to and mopst importantly for it to become instinct. |
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EuroLeague Women because women's basketball is the most important thing in life after family and good health! | |
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| Bada Bing | Jan 20 2008, 04:20 PM Post #4 |
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El Crack
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01 NOV SORRY IT'S BEEN A WHILE Well its been a while but finally I'm at the keyboard. Its been an interesting time at the Eagles over the last couple of months and its been pretty crazy, with the club enhancing its image meaning lots of new people to meet. If you told me I'd have met half as many people as I have I'd have thought you were nuts. As so much has gone on, I'll break it down into a few little sections and write a bit on each. Norway A lot has already been written and said about this trip but no doubt it helped us as a team, if Richard had been able to have been there it would have been perfect from a basketball point of view. For the record if you are planning to go to Norway start saving now, its so expensive that when we got to the airport all the Norwegians were coming back from Newcastle with Primark bags. The highlght of the trip for me though was listening to Forrester commentate and analyse Eurobasket and England v South Africa in the Rugby World Cup at the same time, (lets just say he wasn't too happy with the Rugby Boys.... what does he know, they got to the final...) They should give him one of those Master Card ads... - watching England in the Rugby World Cup £10 - watching Eurobasket £50 - having the knowledge providing commentary and analyses on both in Norway PRICELESS. Start to the season We're happy with where we are right now in terms of our record especially as we're usually a 500 team for the 1st couple of months, we've gutted out results in some of the toughest away venues Plymouth, Leicester and the Rocks but we're not happy with how we're playing. We seem to be able to play a great quarter then a terrible one, or a great defensive game but a terrible offensive game, or finally we'll rack up a 100 plus but give up 90, so although we have a good record we're still looking at working on our consistency and trying to improve it. Off the Court Obviously a lot has been made of the team signing with Northern Rock and Nike but there are many more sponsors that are also with the team. The players have now all been given individual player sponsers, some of which are large businesses in their own right. My sponser is the Malmaison Newcastle, I'm not going to put their names, but the people over there do a great job looking after and helping me out and all they want in return is for me to hang out at the hotel and all their cool parties. The other guys have there own similar kind of deals so the cliub really is growing behind the scenes. The Newcastle Falcons This is my new hobby, if we don't have a game and they have one at home this is where you will find me. I like it for the game and all that stuff but I reckon i'm only allowed to go so much is because the other half likes it to but I don't reckon she goes for the same reasons as me. These guys are hard I'm not even going to joke about it, there is no way you would catch me playing this game and the idea has been thrown out there as a possible charity thing, to which my response was if I can have a bright red bib(this means they can't tackle you apparently) I'm in, but thinking about it red usually attracts things so I could be being set up. If your a Falcons fan to and you see me there come and say hi and try and explain whats going on. |
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8:51 AM Jul 11