Byes under the current format are hard to avoid and it's a shame administrators havent got the power to fix it. Its not in anyones interest for byes to exist but clubs would have to be united in their attempts to fix the underlying problems.
Certainly the weakness in Junior basketball needs addressing and Div 1 needs an overhaul in terms of how many Div 1 sides a club can run and more contentiously the rights of member clubs to Div 1 teams. Time to be performanced based?
Maybe reduce the clubs, introduce zones, run more coaching courses and encourage new blood into clubs.
We have some real problems in structure with the cost of Junior BBall now approaching one of the highest sports to play. Playing across town from Mt barker to Gawler to N'lunga is also an issue petrol wise and when you toss in more than one kid per family playing, Friday and Saturday nights because of the sixers and lightning it fuels the issues.
Head in the sand replies along the lines of 'take your kids to play soccer or netball' to these problems are the reason junior bball is teetering with the drop off at 18 /20 especially in the girls areas a real concern.
You wont lose the SASI kids, but eventually the choice of who gets into SASI will come from a very small pool and the standard will fall away.
Netball is successful for many reasons , chief amongst them that it is played centrally all day on one day, minimising travelling and petrol costs. Is there some scope here for bball to follow. Too hard , will cost home stadiums etc etc are the arguments against but consider the pros and cons before writing it off.
Anyway Stephen, at least get em talking about doing something.

Northern suburbs and Mt Barker demographics are changing rapidly. You are talking about the fastest growing areas in terms of population size and young families.

It makes no business sense whatsoever to cut off your emerging markets.

I do agree the competition needs to opened up more though.

Byes have been around at different times for as long as I have been involved in basketball (21 yrs). I dont understand your point about this been shameful. Travelling across the metro area has also been around for most of that time.

Stephen D

The reason for teams not fielding teams in div 1 is rthe issue.

The problem is that club are entering teams into div 1 who are not able to compete with the standard of competition. When these players get beaten by 50+ every week they quit the spot all together. Placing more teams into this situation will only increase the number of players who are beaten by large scores, and therfore have more players leave the sport for soccer, football and netball.

The answer is to decrease the number of teams in div 1 to 8. We can do this by decreasing the nunmber of clubs to 8. Which I am against for the reasons anon #103860 put forward But alas an 8 team competition work evenly and fairly, as do 12 team competitions. Any other number does not. The 2 bottom clubs from div 1 would play against the top 6 teams from div 2. This would be a much better competition for all those teams. Then the bottom 4 teams in div 2 can play the top 4 teams from div 3. And so on and so forth.

The only way to do this is to use promotion and relegation.

exactly stephen D - every club has a div 1 spot with 2 extra spots for the top 2 div 2 teams over summer.

should any of the top 2 div 2 teams not want div 1 it would be offered to the 3rd placed team. after that nobody else from div 2 gets an offer.

ie north and woodville finish 1-2 after summer GF in div 2 - they are offered two extra spots in div 1 - so there would be a north 2, woodville 2 in div 1. If forestville finished 3rd and north did not want the second div 1 spot - they would be offered it.

it really gives the summer comp a chance to be a true "grading" season - it also supports both arguments - ie promo / rel and not pushing less competitive clubs aside

bring it on i say !

at the moment there is grid lock at the strong clubs - and basketball will pay for the more competitive clubs not being able to cater to their junior needs and only an elite few getting the div 1 squad "nuturing"

Which begs the question '3' ..why isn't basketballSA rushing to help solidify Mavs lack of coaches and playing numbers rather than allowing the drift away to other clubs to become a torrent?

u14 1 girls top 4 maybe Forestville, Sturt, Forestville 2, Sturt 2. Is this fair?

anon #103951,

If the Mavs are too incompetent to keep their own coaches, what ewxactly can Basketball SA do to help them?

They have no working relationship wit their local association! Kids are leaving becasue of poor service and they continually make the same mistakes! They don't want to enter more than 2 teams in grades and their coaches would rather coach ABA and in the Academy than juniors!

God can only help those who help themselves.

"Clubs like Eastern and Central will most likely see a major boost to their playing ranks within the next 10 years or so."

The northern area of Adelaide has been booming as far as population is concerned for the last 30 years!!

How many more years do we have to wait for them?

In ten yars time, if centrals keep going the way they are today, I fear they will not exist.

Perhaps SA basketball should follow a format similar to Victoria's (god forbid!) All teams in all clubs get ranked based on their results in previous years, and go through a grading process. Then the top teams all play in the top grade (10 teams) with a max of 2 allowed from each club. This way the stronger teams all play against each other in a much fairer comp.

Agreed,

It's called promotion/relegation