The NBL is a good league. Good, not great. I don’t think that the league will go under but here are some ideas it could do to make the both the casual and the hardcore fans more excited about basketball in Australia.
The ‘Q Clash’ should be better advertised
If you ask any NBL fan that has been watching the competition for a while who has the best fans most would say Townsville and Cairns. Why not tap into that potential and advertise the hell out of this match-up. A good bet would be to change the name because Q Clash sounds ridiculous and amateur but as a ridiculous and amateur person I can’t think of anything else. After a playoff game last season Russell Hinder practically pleaded to the NBL and the public to make a bigger deal out it and he is absolutely right. Those Queenslanders are straight jacket crazy for basketball; even the relatively new Gold Coast Blaze has a decent fan base for a basketball team. Whenever Townsville plays Cairns the league and the teams need to plaster their faces over every square inch of advertising space in the tropics as well as on One HD (or whoever is broadcasting the games). The NBL needs to get in quick to herd the undecided sports fans away from the AFL’s Gold Coast Suns and into Australian basketball.
Teams need to reach out to areas away from their home bases
Living in remote New South Wales which is nearly eight hours away from the closest NBL team there aren’t many times when I can go to a live game. This isn’t too bad for me because I can always watch the game on television but for kids growing up idolising basketball players it can be a bit disheartening. If the NBL wants to create a bigger fan base it has a simple solution staring it in the face – hold clinics and picture days outside the city it is based. Instead of Melbourne flying to Sydney when it has a game in the Harbour City why not take a bus and make it a road trip and visit towns along the way? Google Maps says that the trip only takes 10 hours and it has the added bonus of being a bonding session for the team which would give the players a better sense of camaraderie with their teammates. Above all the kids that go to these days would have great memories forever. One of my workmates can remember the Canberra Cannons coming to our town to have a play around with the high school kids which must have been over 20 years ago and he still recalls the day with a smile on his face. Just think what Patty Mills could do for the youth of Yass, Holbrook, Benalla or Seymour.
Move the in-game presentation into the year 2011
Why does the NBL continue to stick with music from the 1980s and earlier? Sure everyone claps to Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust and gets excited to Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll but it’s almost becoming embarrassing. A lot of the new commercial songs have a strong bass line that could be used as a clapping prompt and are known by the younger crowd that are starting to get into basketball. Here’s a better idea – why not bring in live DJs from the club scene that could MC for the night which would bring in fresh music as well as the spectacle of live music. The DJs could remix songs or have collaborations of their own to get the feet stomping.
So we now have great music that can get a crowd pumped up without giving them flashbacks of afros and tight gold pants we just need them out of their seats and rocking out. What’s that? They are sitting on their hands because they are too embarrassed to get up and dance? Yep, that’s the way of the Australian basketball supporter. The solution – dim the crowd lights so that they sole focus is on the actual game. That way most spectators will be watching the game while the more adventurous won’t feel so uncomfortable to get up and dance to the beat. I have fond memories of watching the Showtime Lakers (on tape, I’m not that old) and seeing that crowd is almost blacked out because the strong lights are shining on the shining stars.
Another way to get the crowd going is ripped straight from the Milwaukee Bucks and their Aussie star Andrew Bogut. He ingeniously thought of cordoning off a section of the crowd for the loudest and most rambunctious members of the Bucks’ fan club to go nuts for the full 48 minutes of the game to get some noise in the building. This can be brought back to the NBL (and hopefully Andrew Bogut as well) by clubs having try-outs to find the loudest members and picking them to yell and cheer and wave stuff around. The teams could give discounts on season memberships for the lucky few that are chosen or kit them out in full supporter gear like jerseys and flags as a prize. It would bring the club’s community closer to the team by including them in the inner workings of the players and officials. This brings me to the next point:
Make the game more personal
It seems like every year there is a new team in the same colours in the NBL. Young local prospects go overseas to get more money; new imports come in to try their best to fit into a league and culture that they have never been in while one year contracts causes players to move around more than a tall person stuck in a Tiger Airways’ economy seat. This movement creates distance between the team and its supporters. One way to alleviate this is make the game more personal. In the pre-game introductions tell the crowd where the players are from or where they have come from if they are imports or returning players. At half time have a short video of players giving the camera a tour of their home town and where they used to play basketball growing up. Make the players more than players, make them people.
Everyone loves to hear about the journeyman who has played in Poland, Brazil, Netherlands and the third moon of Jupiter because it gives him a back story and a human side. People like to hear about the rookie who rose from the ranks of junior basketball while under the tutelage of Lanard Copeland and Sedale Threatt because they can get behind someone who has put in the hard yards and are now being rewarded for it. If they get nothing else out of it, at least the crowd would get to see embarrassing photos of the players when they were young.
Are these steps going to cause the NBL to join the ranks of the AFL and NRL? No. But they will make the game more spectator-friendly while keeping the quality of basketball that has been on show for the past few decades.
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