Good point, another good coach overseas. Tom Wisman is also apparently the national coach over there, so quite a few ex-NBL coaches getting their pay day in Asia.

Ahhhhh, if only the NBL saw the goldmine that is Asian basketball and at the very least made attempts to recruit Asian players and/or play Asian teams.

Yeah, pity theyve never thought of that!!

Vlahov has been trying to build a relationship for year with Asia

Is Singapore part of Asia? Do you remember the Slingers? Waste of time & money!!

Westover was likable? By who?

Wasn't Singapore targeted as more of an events night than a season / follow the team.

Not sure Singapore is the place to be for a regular support base, but IF you can get the corporate dollar could have worked well.

Asia is definitely a market that should be seriously consider, how to integrate with what we have and not have a big disparity is the issue.

The biggest issue is the talent disparity. No one likes lop-sided matches. Games between NBL teams and the Chinese national team are great, but there arent a lot of other competitive sides in the region.

It is something that's being worked on though. Something involving an improved Aussie second tier, the NZNBL and some Asian clubs could work.

Really, Oceania and Asia need to merge to form FIBA Asia Pacific or something similar and then this will all work a lot better.

Could they not run a champions league scenario at the end of the season where two grand finalists play off against top two teams from asia. Seems to work in soccer and cricket to access bigger markets.

They already have that competition in Asia. You could try and get Aussie teams invovled, but the problem is the games would probably be slaughters. As I said, it we were all in one FIBA continent these things would work a lot easier.

Would be nice if we were a bit closer to Europe! That would enable some good extra competition.

I have seen the CBA, and I have seen the results of quite a few games between NBL clubs and CBA clubs. The CBA is closer to the NZNBL even with their high priced imports. Dont forget, good NBL teams are at about the level of the Chinese national team. Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Sydney all beat them even with Yao Ming in the team in the past decade.

I certainly agree that Chinese basketball has massive potential for improvement, but it has a long, long way to go to catch up to Australia. Dont forget, China has failed to qualify for the last FIBA U19 WC, and the Asian teams there were well off the pace.

If 3 other teams were put in the region (in either of Filipino City 1, Filipino City 2, Jakarta, Taiwan, Guam, Kuala Lumpur etc) and the Aussie league had 12 teams and was divided into divisions of 4 teams each then the travel factor for these Asian teams would not be as problematic as it was for singapore.

The Chinese League plays from July-August so if the NBL schedule stayed as it is the best players from that league could play in this Asian division.

Essentially 35 of the best Asian players could play in this division. If Guam was one of the teams they could have all American players so the pool of Asian players would be better.

I guess the U19 point was that they arent necessarily coming on in leaps and bounds as they were expected too, rather than talking about the quality of the CBA.

Donta Smith got cut because his 22 points and 9 boards per game werent enough to carry the locals on his team. And he certainly wasnt dominant in the NBL, though he did have a very good grand final series exploiting Melbourne's poor attempts at zone defence.

The only game I can remember a CBA team beating an NBL team was at the start of this year when the joke of a Tigers team, minus Greer, lost by 2 points, and we know how far off NBL standard they were.

Both the Kings and Wildcats thrashed CBA teams in the pre-season and the virtual NZNBL team the Breakers sent to China in the pre-season won comfortably too I think. Doesnt the Gaze squad of NBL benchies beat CBA teams?

BTW, when I was talking thrashings I was thinking more of other Asian leagues, which are well below the CBA. I would think if an NBL team played a CBA team in the corresponding ladder position you would be looking at about a 20-25 point margin on average? If you play the game in China with Chinese refs that could turn into some competitive games!

BTW - didnt the Tigers go 1-2 in 2007 against China with Yao and Yi in the line-up? I thought they lost the first by double figures, just lost the second and then won the third. Is my memory betraying me?

Yes

Anyone here been to China, would you see basketball rings spotted around the place with kids playing. Singapore, for such a small island country had basketball courts everywhere.

Is too, looked it up. The Tigers lost by 13 and then 6. It was the Bullets who played a three game series and went 1-2. Good effort by both teams really against a team that has made the top 16 of the past three WCs and the top 8 of the past two Olympics.

No worries!!

And Team Player, the Philippines is absolutely basketball crazy with people playing on the street everywhere.