Editor’s Note: Australian basketball fans are out there. We know you are. Some of you are in hibernation. Some are biding their time. But you’re out there, with fond memories and hopes of a return to those heady days gone past. Jonathan Bretag is one of us. He approached me with this amazing article on the glory days of Australian basketball, with hopes that they are not gone forever. Enjoy, as I did.
I had an interesting dream this morning. That’s not a good statement to begin a written article or a conversation with, but please bear with me. I dreamt that all of my teeth had fallen out and…well, that bit isn’t important, let me just skip to the interesting part. The part about NBL basketball. In my dream, I was looking at a photo in a magazine of a guy rising above defenders and about to complete a nifty finger-roll. From the lithe, athletic frame, the initials “J.C.” on the back of the singlet, and also the rather high shorts, I immediately recognised who it was. An anonymous voice in the background, sounding only vaguely interested, asked, “Who’s that?”
Barely able to comprehend the ignorance of the anonymous voice I answered, “Who is it? It’s James Crawford! You don’t remember the “Alabama Slammer”? Perth Wildcats? Remember Cal Bruton, Andrew Vlahov, “Tiny” Pinder, and um…..Mike Ellis! Run, gun and have some fun! Those were some good teams they had!”
I didn’t seem to be making an impression on the anonymous voice, despite my passionate recollections, but I suddenly remembered something that was undeniably impressive. “I’ve got this other picture of James Crawford. It’s from the Australian Basketball News 1988 NBL Yearbook and his arm is seriously at the top of the backboard. That guy could leap.”
“Top of the backboard? Really?” The voice was becoming more interested.
“Yeah, and it’s not like a visual illusion or anything because his hand is on the ball. He’s pinning the ball on a rebound or a block or something and it’s literally right at the top of the backboard!”
“That’s pretty cool. Who did you say he was?”
And then I woke up.
A flood of National Basketball League memories started flooding through my head. Or should I say, a flood of Hungry Jacks NBL memories, as the league was known when I first became aware of it as a ten year old in 1988. It was around this time that somebody said to me, “You’re pretty tall for your age, I bet you play basketball don’t you?”
I shook my head and replied, “Nah.”
“You should give it a go, you’ve got the height,” they reasoned.
I couldn’t argue with that, so give it a go I did, and as soon as I played my first game of basketball I wanted to shoot hoops every single day and read every article I could about every league. Playing the game was fine, I was lucky enough to be able to convince my dad to install a hoop, and much to the annoyance of the neighbours I used it a lot. Many, many well spent hours.
Finding information about the game was more difficult. The problem in 1988, the same as it is in 2010, was there was very little coverage of basketball in mainstream media in Australia. The difference back then, was there was also no Internet. I really wanted to read about basketball, but there wasn’t much in the major newspapers. Overseas magazines were expensive. And yes, it’s worth restating, the Internet was still years away. I’m old. What was a young fellow to do? Fortunately there was a publication called the Australian Basketball News.
The Australian Basketball News (ABN) was a newspaper style publication filled with fascinating (to me) articles about all levels of basketball in Australia, with the major focus being the highest level of Australian basketball, the Hungry Jacks NBL. Being 1988 it was also an Olympic year so there was heaps of stuff about the men’s and women’s national teams. I learned all about the Boomers and the Opals. I learned who Andrew Gaze was, and that he scored a lot of points (even though his team, the Melbourne Tigers, were in those days very ordinary). I learned about interesting characters and what their nicknames were, like Dean “The Man Mountain” Uthoff, and Shane “Hammer” Heal.
There was also no shortage of nicknames relating to jumping ability such as the aforementioned “Alabama Slammer” or “Jumping” Joe Hurst. One of my most cherished issues of ABN had “Jumping” Joe on the cover, dressed nicely with a shiny trophy in his hands. He was named the league MVP in 1988 while playing for Hobart. Joe Hurst immediately became my idol even though I had never even seen him play. I may not have seen him play, but the descriptions of him which I read sounded awesome. Then of course there was the legendary “Leaping” Leroy Loggins, an all-time great. Interestingly, Leroy Loggins’ nickname of “Leaping” didn’t give an indication of the major strength of his game, but I suppose “Leaping” is catchier than “Excellent mid-range jumpshot” Leroy Loggins.
In each issue of ABN they ran a “Spot The Ball” competition. Fairly self-explanatory, they had a picture with the ball somehow magically removed from it. You had to cut a ball out and stick it where you thought it would be, then mail it to them to win a prize. I recall the picture was from a recent exhibition game between Australia and the USSR. There was a player from each team looking into the air. I figured there was a fair chance that where they were looking was where the ball would be. I cut. I pasted. I sent my entry in and I won the amazing first prize! A years subscription to the Australian Basketball News! I was beside myself with glee. For the next year I waited in anticipation for each new issue to be delivered. The anticipation was made that much more exciting due to the pattern of delivery being extremely erratic. I never quite knew when the next issue might show up in the mail box, but it was always made my day when it did.
When it came to TV coverage of the NBL, it was fairly slim pickings in 1988, especially living in a rural part of Australia. The Seven network showed NBL games in those days, but only in major cities so it was rare for me to see any footage. Of the games on TV I did see, I can still remember the lack of knowledge and feel for the game shown by TV commentators completely out of their element. One of the funniest moments I can remember was watching a Geelong Supercats game featuring a young Shane “Hammer” Heal. The commentator was Drew Morphett, more known for his work calling Aussie Rules football. As the “Hammer” dropped a trademark massive three from several steps beyond the line, Morphett cried out “Heal for three….SWISHO!” I had never heard, and have never since heard, a commentator use the term “swisho”. Swish is fine. It’s a widely accepted term. Not “swisho”. It sounded absolutely ridiculous, and uniquely Australian. We do like to put “o” on the end of words, don’t we? Me and my entire family burst into laughter. Even my mum, who was by no means a basketball expert, shook her head and said, “Did he just say swisho?”
Moving ahead to the early 1990’s, I was there at the first ever NBL game played at Rod Laver Arena. I think it was still called Melbourne Park back then. This was a massive moment in the history of the NBL. No longer a fringe sport in Australia, basketball was being played in a 15,000 seat stadium with live network television coverage across the nation. It should have been the beginning of something great. Didn’t really work out that way. I still shake my head at the rims they chose for those first couple of games at Melbourne Park. Perhaps everyone else has managed to suppress the memory by now, but let me remind you. They installed rims that were so firm and unforgiving that if a shot was off even fractionally it had no chance of scoring. It was basically either swish or miss. When all eyes were on the sport, after all the years of building to that moment, they couldn’t get such a basic thing right as having hoops that the ball could easily go through. I felt like crying. As soon as I saw former Australian Boomer Robert Sibley miss a basic layup, with the ball bouncing around and out of the cylinder in a way I had never known to be possible, I knew there was a serious issue. Perhaps it’s too simplistic to point to this one decision as the thing which killed basketball as a spectator sport in Australia. It really didn’t help though.
But let’s talk about the good times. My greatest, most lasting NBL memories. The first would be seeing an exhibition game between the Geelong Supercats and Hobart played in my home town. I actually got to see Wayne Englestad, former Denver Nugget, playing for Hobart. Running up and down the same court that I played on. I was quite possibly the only person in the stadium who realised Wayne Englestad had played for the Denver Nuggets, including Wayne Englestad, and I don’t think he lasted more than a few games before he was cut from Hobart, but nevertheless. He was a former NBA player who was on my home court. What a moment.
As for a moment which can be appreciated by people other than just me, you can’t go past the Melbourne Tigers securing their first NBL championship. A great moment in sport, in Australian basketball and in father/son relationships as Andrew Gaze nearly killed his father Lindsay in a celebratory headlock. Nobody could forget that vision. I have never met Andrew Gaze (I did get to shake Linday’s hand once) so I don’t really know what he’s like as a person, but this seemed like a victory for all that is good and just in the world. They just seem like great people, the Gazes, and the Tigers seemed like a fantastic, close-knit team. The Perth Wildcats fans did not agree, having the poor taste to actually boo throughout the victory presentation, but it didn’t matter.
I’ve got so many other memories and interesting facts about the NBL of course, as I’m sure all Aussie hoops fans do. I haven’t even mentioned Arne Duncan, who went from Eastside Spectre to important member of the Obama administration. Didn’t see that one coming. Or the whole Winston Crite episode, a player who apparently chose to leave the NBA in favour of playing in the NBL and….well it didn’t really work out. Remember Bobby Locke? He was a tiny American import with kind of a weird jumpshot, who dropped an incredible amount of points after arriving virtually straight off the plane. Jet lag could not stifle the game of Bobby Locke. Remember Brett Rainbow? A guy who I don’t remember playing a single minute of court time in the NBL, yet he somehow kept winning the dunk contest every year. I suppose I should also mention Brian Goorjian. You can probably tell I’m more of a Tigers fan though, so we don’t need to talk about him.
These are just random thoughts that come to me, and much like dreams of the “Alabama Slammer”, they come to me when I least expect them. As I flick through the old issues of Australian Basketball News and remember players, and even teams, that I had long since forgotten, I hope somebody more qualified than me is actually writing all this stuff down for future generations. More importantly, I hope future generations actually have an NBL to watch and to read about.
