Basketball and everything in between

Welcome to another edition of Saturday’s Silly Sollies.  I would like to dedicate this edition to the Australian Acquastion of the Year Russell Hinder.  Hopefully you will get your starting spot back soon Rusty!  So lets go.  There is a lot of stuff going on in the basketball world.

- Townsville upset the Melbourne Tigers on Wednesday night.  I was sitting there after watching the debarcle that was South Dragons vs Cairns and the score came up on the screen on Fox Sports news after the game.  I have to admit that I did a double take and was amazed to see that the Crocs had knocked off the Tigers.  Good on them for getting it done.  It sounds like it was an awesome game and Michael Cedar got the job done.  It looked like that the Crocs got it done with a lot of guys contributing. 

- On the same night, I had the displeasure of watching the Dragons rip apart the Taipans.  I knew that the Taipans were in for a long night when Darnell Mee was injured to start and didn’t even suit up.  Scott Cook looked reasonably composed against the pressure of the Dragons but Kerry Williams did not.  The Taipans seemed to run through their offensive sets but weren’t getting anything out of it.  There is a lot of pressure of Alan Black.  I think that he deserves to see out the season as he is a good coach and has a proven track record at a number of locations.  I read with interest that the Cairns Convention Centre is still throwing mud around the lease etc.  It will be interesting to see how that pans out.

- Thursday night saw the NZ Breakers give the Perth Wildcats a bit of a basketball lesson. I watched the majority of this game (my wife rang her mother and Grandmaster Funk came over for me to sign some mortgage documents) and to me the most pleasing thing for Breakers fans must be the fact that Kirk Penney was pretty well contained and wasn’t a huge contributer.  I really enjoyed watching Dillion Boucher.  I am the first to admit that I have never been a huge fan of his, but he is the perfect player for this team.  He is a pretty good ball handler, has some basketball smarts and plays a good team game.  I think that the Breakers are defintely now the real deal.  I was pretty amazed to hear the interview with Connor Henery after the game where he criticised CJ Bruton for standing at half court and playing it up to the crowd.  Get over it Connor!  He was trying to get the fans excited (which they should be) and create some atmosphere.  This seems to be an interesting rivilary brewing between these two teams.  When will teams learn not to press the Breakers?  Hopefully soon for them! Shawn Redhage’s best friend Phil Jones was also pretty good during this game. 

- In the latest edition of the OT, JR and DJ Rod discussed all things NBL with Russell Hinder and Crocs Marketing, Media & Communications Manager Mili Simic.  It was different to the usual format of the show and I really enjoyed it.  They were talking about some ideas to increase the popularity of the NBL and one idea floated around was the ‘Bonus Point’.  When the bonus point was introduced into Super 14 Rugby, some people were against the idea but it has proven to be successful.  I am not overly sure about Rusty’s idea about if you get 10 dunks and 10 threes in a game, you get the bonus, but it would sure make for some interesting times.  Thanks again to Russell Hinder for nominating this site as his favourite basketball site.  There is a lot of love here for you!

- Darren Ng has wrote an article about the Slingers latest series of games in Indonesia.  Whilst I can’t exactly imagine basketball being overly competive in Indonesia, good on the Slingers for promoting the game in Asia.  Look out for a Q & A that Darren has done for us that will be published next week (Monday maybe)  It is a great read and he is very articulate (which I am not and I am not even sure if I spelt it correctly!) and you can tell that he is a doctor!!

- Boomers 2010 is the latest entry on JR’s blog.  In his blog, he discusses the team that will represent Australia at the 2010 World Championships in Turkey.  I agree with his assessment on the automatic selections (Andrew Bogut, Brad Newley, Matt Neilsen, David Andersen, CJ Bruton and Pat Mills) and also the guys who should make the cut pretty easily (Mark Worthington, Joe Ingles and David Barlow)  So that is nine guys, which leaves three roster spots avaliable.  There are a lot of guys up for those three spots.  I am not overly sure about who could fill those three spots but I wil have a think about it and blog it soon. 

- Ross Lewis from the Western Australian has wrote an article about Australian basketball’s new head honcho will need to keep a cake of soap in his office. In the article he talks about how Perth Wildcats CEO Nick Marvin has had enough of the swearing of NBL players and coaches and he wants action taken.  I am a bit of a fence sitter on this point.  I can understand that sometimes people become caught up in the moment and can drop the occassional ‘F Bomb’ and the ‘S Word’.  I have never heard anybody say the ‘C word’ that rhymes with runt.  I can also understand that the players and coaches have a responsibility to promote the sport in a positive light. 

- This Greg Evans character is really starting to annoy me now.  It has been revealed that the Sydney players have not been paid for over a month.  I don’t want to blog heaps about it but I will say that I hope that they see out the season and make a deep play off run.  

- Andrew Bogut has a new blog entry up entitled ‘When it Rains, It Pours’   He talks about his injury at the moment and how the whole Sydney Spirit stuff is affected people that he knows and cares about.  I remember reading an interview somewhere where he talked about that one day in the future he wanted to own a NBL franchise but he didn’t want to go in half arsed. 

- In honour of the whole Movember thing, check out this article about the Great Mustaches in NBA history.  My personal favourites are Connie Hawkins and James Edwards. 

- The people out there are really enjoying listening to The TO – The official podcast of Basketball and Everything in Between.  There are some haters out there but generally speaking most people are appreciating our crappy effort to making a contribution to the Australian Basketballing Community.  We enjoy doing it and hopefully get better each week.   Speaking of podcasting, it has become a bit of an obsesison of mine over the past couple of weeks.  Obviously there is The OT and The Official NBL Podcast each week.  Is there any other NBL podcasts out there?  If there are, could you leave a comment at the bottom of this post or email me at ashleyproud@gmail.com  I am sure that you will all appreciate this non basketball related podcast.  

- This is a pretty good interview with Adam Ballinger It is interesting to see how much he loves Larry Bird.  The more I think about his game, the more he is a poor mans Larry Bird. 

- Congratulaitons to the Melbourne Tigers for allowing Bo’s Blog to return.