It's nothing new.
Most potentially elite kids are good allround athletes, who can excel at multiple sports when young. Eventually if they want to go down that path they need to pick one and concentrate on it.

If anything, over the past 20ish years, I think we have seen more kids choose basketball, because of US college opportunities.

Most kids in Australia grow up playing more than one sport and have had to make tough decisions when its time to choose one. It used to always be cricket Vs footy / Rugby codes, but now basketball and soccer is in the mix too.

Its important to remember that someone being good at any sport at a junior level doesn't guarantee success as a pro. We've had plenty of guys who have represented Australia at under 19s and even under 23s who've not succeeded despite dedicating themselves to hoops.

With around 800 full time pro gigs in AFL vs about 80 for Australian basketball players (and also add on 80% of the AFL players make more than the NBL players), if they're not the best of the best its better to go AFL.

At the end of the day though, I think it probably still comes down (most of the time) to going with the sport you love more.

in the 80s and 90s though (especially in adl) the footy clubs were worried about this new sport "basketball" as it was growing so much, more kids were leaving footy to play basketball. But somewhere along the way Basketball either stopped investing or stopped trying and footy regained it's strong hold on the Aus sporting market.

Today if you go to a school , kids who have never played basketball or hardly know anything about the sport know who Kobe is, MJ is, Lebron is or Westbrook. This is where BA and all the sub Basketball associations need to hit.
NBA players are Icons aswell as sportsmen.
With the Surge in Ben Simmons BA really needs to push our sport into the 21st C. This is the second golden era, NBL is almost as good as it was in the 90s, NBA is back with huge big time players. The time is now for Basketball in Australia and in Adelaide it feels like we are going to miss it.

The Nbl is nearly as good now as the 90s? Are you kidding? There's 8 teams with at least one of them still in major trouble (and with another arms race a la Eddie v Seamus of the mid 00s more may join them).

The nbl is showing positive signs but we need a few years of good signs before we can even talk about that

Not quite Glory Days again, especially when the best Aussie players used to play in the NBL and every import made a big impact on their team and were household names..

Good sign is we are at least matching Europe money so the fringe NBA players / marquee signings, Webster, Goulding, Jawai still play in the NBL.

For the simple fact we are an english speaking league and money for imports in China usually goes to Americans, we don't need to worry about the CBA at the moment as far as local talent.

Really hoping the league continues to build upon the early good signs this year and not be complacent like the past.

LK said as much he won't stop until it's back, let's hope he backs that up. Looking good so far. Amazing to think it's only been a couple months or so.

It's pretty close to as good as ever on-court (definitely better than the first 6-7 years of the 90s) but certainly not as strong off-court as the 90s. Combine the two and we'll be doing alright!

Need more Trimmingham / Ennis types..

Three country Vic basketball players drafted whom I know and wish all the best - Tom Doedee to Adelaide, Darcy Tucker to Fremantle and Tommy Cole to West Coast weer all guards when they played hoops.

It was interesting to hear during the AFL draft Sheehan talking it up about how many talls were being drafted, especially early on. He made mention that it was great to see these tall kids choosing football ahead of basketball.

Obviously he was not referring to the above mentioned former State guards. So, I have tried to determine which kids may have given up a possible college career in basketball that were talls picked up in the AFL draft, but I am not aware of any.

Does anyone else possibly know if there were some decent basketballers with height other than those I have mentioned who were picked up in the draft this week?

Or was Sheehan just blowing some hot wind, trying to say basketball was poaching footballers, really!??

Not enough WAG culture and controversy in NBL to keep up with footy. Not glamourous enough yet..

Clapton Oliver pick number 4 AFL draft played rep ball for Echuca and also played pg for Vic Country at the Australian Country Cup. Mitch King pick number 42 is one of the few talls taken in this years draft played rep ball for Wodonga and also tried out for Vic Country but never quite made it - I guess he has now!! That's five Vic Country lads in the draft and I bet there's more.

I think it's important to distinguish between guys who played basketball and guys who were a chance of being pros. Sad to say it but of each age group in Australia on average only half a dozen or so get a pro gig.

Completely right. And around 10 times that many in afl

With regards to "talls", the definition really changes from hoops to footy. A guy who is 6'4 is big enough for a key position player in the afl, but still just a guard in basketball. It does seem to be those guys we're losing more of. The genuinely big guys seem to be taking more of their opportunities to play basketball, perhaps because of better college offers. It's the guards and swingmen we seem to be losing more of.

I wonder, given the current environment, what Sam Mackinnon would have done. He was by far the biggest coup for basketball given his father and elite athleticism. Would he still have made that same decision?

I have no idea whether any more or less kids are "choosing" one way or the other.

I think that since basketball hit its heights back in the 90's more kids went looking for US College scholarships. (It happened previously, but it seemed to become more commonplace over the past 20 years.)
But I wonder if there has come a "maturing" of that process, with young guys taking a clearer look at their opportunities.
I don't know what the minimum salary is in the AFL,but guys who are any good are often re-signed within their first season to new contracts worth $200k+ per year. That's heady stuff for a 19~20yr old. Beats spending 4 years earning a degree in basket-weaving from Podunk University.