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Basque Separatist; archive
Topic Started: Feb 3 2008, 04:31 PM (424 Views)
Bada Bing
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El Crack
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
22 OCT THROUGH ROSE TINTED GLASSES

The BBL is enjoying a renaissance. That is a hell of a controversial statement with the current stick the product is receiving. But a closer look at now and before demonstrates it is pretty accurate nevertheless.

Aside from the resolution of issues with EB and the removal of the BBA as a distraction it is also instructive to compare playing levels and infrastructure levels with past times.

To do that however requires an understanding of the past structure of basketball in this country, or to be strictly accurate the different structures that have been in place. Because like our economy pre Gordon Brown, British basketball was about boom and bust.

In the early/mid 80s the game was purely leisure centre based. Sunderland with Wearran and Haeffner were generally competing against Palace with the Lloyd brothers and Stimpson and shorts were short and facial hair abounded. Crowtree held around 1200 people, strong clubs like Solent and Leicester would get fewer than that. Quality of imports was relatively high as few Americans saw mainland Europe as an attractive option. Few, if any, British players were paid to play the game. Channel 4 picked up the ‘buzz’ and televised for a couple of years including a live second half on a Monday night but it never caught sufficient viewers attention and shortly died a death.





















The mid to late 80s continued in the same vein. Most clubs had two very solid imports but little English depth. Football clubs dabbled in the sport with Manchester United, AFC Portsmouth and Glasgow Rangers all running teams for a couple of years. The fad died out and there were also some pretty poor teams with Tyneside going 2-34 one season and Bolton & Bury not much better. There was no television coverage. In fact looking through the history of the British game it is one of transitory teams, failing to set down roots and disappearing almost as quickly as they arrived. Thankfully a trend which is now being reversed, albeit slowly.

Onto the early 90s and the domination of the great Kingston teams. Truly superb teams. But not to forget that for every Kingston team there was a London Docklands, 1-32 : awful. And such was the concentration of British talent at 2 or 3 clubs, there was simply no competition down the league. The prospect of no12 beating no1 (Everton beating Guildford for instance) was simply non-existent. Sunderland did have a superb team (Bucknall et al) for half a season. They overspent and nearly folded, resorting latterly to a team of Russ Saunders and local-league players in front of 150 people in a warehouse in Washington.

Eventually it became unsustainable : Kingston moved to Guildford, entered Europe, and that was the end of Guildford. Worthing, a leisure centre based team took over their mantle, led by Swoop Cunningham, Colin Irish and Herman Harried. They did have other players, but I really cant remember them as they played little part. And they won everything. Still no television and very little depth amongst the teams. No-one played in an Arena and few teams got over 1000 people in. Sunderland’s fan base disintegrated, for instance.

Then jimmy Brandon came on the scene with a promoted Sheffield Sharks team which went ahead and won the league straight off. Iain McKinney, Chris Finch, Garnet Gayle, Todd Cauthorn, Roger Huggins, Jason Swaine, Adrian Anderson were the stand out names and for the first time ever, defence actually became a factor in the British game. Just pausing there though, is their any chance of that line up winning the BBL in 2007? Top 4 maybe but no higher.

And whilst they were the best there were some truly awful teams, headlined primarily by Sunderland and Chester. This is the league where Sunderland lost their first game of the season 100-36! Imagine the stick the BBL would get now if that happened.

And then basketball became truly cool. It boomed. Wealthy ‘beautiful’ people decided there was money to be made. They were of course wrong, in fact there was a lot of money to be lost, but it seemed a good idea at the time. And so in came the Arenas, in came 6 Americans, in came the money to pay for Sky, in came the razzmatazz, the Metro FM DJ’s, in came the free tickets. And for a short time the standard of the game increased. It was bound to with people like Sir John Hall willing to blow £500k a season on basketball. Down a player, go and sign Dwayne Morton, he of GSW court time. Court time for British players was non-existent but the show was on.

And we saw good players, Conlan, Phelps, Danny Lewis, Pero etc etc. That said we also saw some pretty awful teams in some dodgy venues, Derby at the Thunderdome a particular non-favourite but also the Craig Lynch Eagles team which was pretty bad (Chris Webber anyone?).

And then the bubble burst. It was always going to. The rich investors were not going to stomach continual six figure losses when they finally worked out that the sport was not going to take hold through the razzmatazz route. So they walked. And that 5 year era, which saw the strongest basketball games in the UK in living memory, proved itself to be entirely unsustainable. Manchester went bust, Newcastle would have had Blake not been offered it for nothing, Sheffield changed ownership, Leopards pulled out for a year for the fans to try and sort something out, Towers move out of Wembley and back to CP and trod water until they eventually pulled out. Birmingham could only attract a cut price owner.

Only Chester and Leicester due to shrewd contacts, recruiting and the fact that they had never needed shedloads of money anyway prospered.

So those 5 years, great though the buzz was for those of us who really cared about the game, ultimately have an asterisk next to them, meaning tried it, failed it.

Which left pieces needing to be picked up. A generation of English players who had been excluded from their own league, no player pathways in existence at all and some pretty awful teams.

And by and large those pieces have now been picked up. Newcastle is the only club in the history of British basketball to maintain profitability whilst playing in an Arena. The Rocks will hopefully soon be the second and both have made a genuine attempt to link in with their local community (ie those who go to St James Park, not those who like to hear the Macarena on during a game). Other healthy clubs have developed themselves over years like Plymouth or even quicker like Guildford. Clubs or owners that were bankrupt of ideas have died (see Thames Valley, Birmingham) The quality of venues is as it always was, no better no worse than any other time apart from the 5 year asterisk period. And the top 4 teams are as deep as any top 4 teams in the last 30 years THAT WERE FINANCIALLY STABLE. You can say that the Giants team of 99 would wipe the floor with them, it would be comparing apples and oranges as one team could be paid for and the other could not.

But the major difference is at the bottom. An English kid, Daniel Sandell has today scored 38 points for his hometown Birmingham Panthers team. Because of the pathways being created there is a depth to the league that was not there at any time outside of the asterisk period. No Gord Wood inspired Sunderland or 1 man London Docklands team or all English Chester team. Genuine competition from 1-12 and a genuine opportunity for British players to make a living and dedicate themselves to basketball. As they grow and the new clubs mature then the league will grow further.

It will never be the NBA, it will never be the ACB. But I would like to hear an argument from anyone who can put forward a rational case that the league now is in demonstratively worse shape than it was at any time between the years 1985-1997 and 2002-2007. The remaining 5 years, the basketball was fine but finances were disastrous and a fair comparison can therefore not be made.

I’m waiting ……


Oh and buy a bloody BADABALL t shirt whilst youre at it!





 
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