NBL Round One Guide
Tagged in: NBL
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The addition of two extra playoff spots has given mid and lower-table teams renewed hope ahead of the Dominion Finance National Basketball League’s tip-off on Thursday night.
For the NBL’s 27th season, it has re-introduced the six-team playoff format – a post-season staple of the league in the late-1980s and most of the 1990s – for the first time since 1998, offering hope to teams left on the outer at playoff time last June.
Youthtown Auckland Stars, nine-time NBL champions, missed the playoffs last season for the first time since 2002 and will be one of the non-playoff teams, along with the Century City Wellington Saints and Devon Dynamos Taranaki – the ‘ballers formerly known as the Mountain Airs – eyeing the playoff party.
Even the Canterbury Rams, Manawatu Jets and Cartridge World Otago Nuggets – who had a combined 10 wins in 2007 – will be thinking of form resurrections and top-six finishes as more than fantasy.
“It gives more hopes to the teams down the bottom to make the playoffs, that’s great, and I hope they all have winning records,” said fifth-year Easy LPG Bay Hawks coach Shawn Dennis.
“The majority of teams have improved in some way and I think that makes for a good league and hopefully a couple new teams in the playoffs. It’s always good to see new teams make the playoffs.”
The new format will feature two first round elimination games between the third and sixth, and fourth and fifth qualifiers, before one-game semifinals against the top two qualifiers and a best-of-three NBL Finals series.
The NBL has operated various four-team playoff formats since 1999.
The Heat trio of Oscar Forman, Tim Behrendorff and Mika Vukona have been released to play on Thursday night after the Harvey Norman NZ Breakers season ended, while Phill Jones and Chris Daniel for the CPS Nelson Giants, Mike Townsend for the Canterbury Rams and Brent Charleton for the Cartridge World Otago Nuggets have also been cleared.
Former league MVP Adrian Majstrovich will play for his third club in as many seasons, switching from the Saints to Stars, who will welcome back Dillon Boucher and Casey Frank.
The Waikato Pistons and Bay Hawks have been the most disadvantaged by pre-season disruptions with five players late arriving – the Pistons with Gold Coast Blaze team-mates Pero Cameron and Jason Crowe, Perth Wildcats reserve Mike Homik, import Brian Wethers in China and Ben Hill in Iceland, and the Hawks with Harvey Norman NZ Breakers Paul Henare and Paora Winitana, American Kevin Smith, new signing Damian Ekenasio and Everard Bartlett in Iceland.
Tall Black Jones will return after sitting out the 2007 NBL, joined by Blaze development squad big man Rowan Gray, while retired Tall Black centre Tony Rampton will join younger brother Damon with his home-town Dynamos.
The Pistons pulled off an import coup by getting the signatures of Crowe and Wethers, both Australian NBL tested, with Wethers a former MVP.
Other key roster features include the Nuggets signing Heat pair Charleton and Nat Connell and American imports Jay Anderson and Rashaan Smith, the Jets bringing in Kantrail Horton, a Waikato Titan in 2005, the Giants adding big import Michael Harrison, the Dynamos American Keith Salscheider and the Stars adding point guard Larry Bratcher.
The NBL will feature three rookie head coaches this season – Chris Tupu in Nelson, taking over from five-time coach of the year and Tall Blacks coach Nenad Vucinic, and Americans Don Sims at Otago and Doug Marty in Wellington – along with three former coaches returning to the league – Tony Webster at Harbour, Tim McTamney at Manawatu and Bert Knops at Canterbury.
