Don't throw a party just yet, but the long-awaited return of the Sydney Kings and Brisbane Bullets might be just around the corner. Dodge Taylor, aka The Basketball Professor thinks he might have a scoop on this, in collaboration with Daniel Eade of Gaze Hoops. As you can see from Dodge's post, nothing is confirmed at this stage (and we have seen enough disappointments in the past with regard to these teams) but these are certainly positive signs nonetheless.

Both the Kings and Bullets died a painful death around June 2008 after financial "complications" relating to their respective owners. Since then, the NBL has been much more stringent in its financial appraisal of team ownership. It will be interesting to see how the groups attempting to resurrect these two former league stalwarts stand up to scrutiny.

Discussions on this topic are going on at Hoops.com.au and OzHoopsBoards with nothing substantial coming out so far.

Other NBL and Aussie basketball news

• A stack of news from JR, On Fire: Round 17 - The Defining Round
• The continuing awesome game recaps from Can't Buy a Basket.
• Fox Sports: Andrew Bogut stands tall in Australian sport rich list.
  
  "The Milwaukee Bucks centre has shot up from fifth to second in the Business Review Weekly's (BRW) latest list of the nation's top 50 sports earners behind occasional golfer Greg Norman.
  The 25-year-old's five-year, $US60 million ($A65 million) contract extension has kicked in for the current NBA season and Bogut has responded with his most productive season, averaging 15.1 points and 10.4 rebounds a game.
  The BRW listed Bogut as earning $14m a year, hot on Norman's ($15m) tail even if the two-time British Open champion's wealth has long been coming from off the golf course.
• Last night Patty Mills played in his first game back with the Idaho Stampede. His performance was not his finest, particularly during the earlier part of the game where his shooting was off. However he did show his amazing turn of speed and had the Utah Flash play-by-play guy exalting his praises. The Stampede scored a 116-108 victory, which was mainly spurred on by an amazing performance by Coby Karl (son of George), who had 36 points and 11 rebounds and was running on ice-water to put the game into OT. Mills played well in the overtime period, setting up a couple of plays and scoring himself, to bring his numbers to a respectable 21 points, six assists and two steals. However he did have three early turnovers, four fouls and shot only 5/19 from the field. Not to be ignored, for the opposition, big Aussie Luke Nevill put up 18 points (9/14) and six rebounds. Boxscore.
  
• The Border Mail had a little trouble with their captions on this article about Mark Worthington's father, Greg, who is team manager of Western Australia’s Australian Junior Country Cup travelling party. See below (it may have been fixed by now on the original, or not).
  



Oh Wortho, how you've changed!

• The Age: The past year has been pretty full-on for Mike Rose.

  The 22-year-old American has gone from playing basketball for Eastern Kentucky University to playing with Turkish professional team Oyak Renault.

  And after what turned out to be a short stint back home in Chicago, the talented shooting guard signed with the Melbourne Tigers last week as it powers towards the National Basketball League play-offs.

  His appointment comes as insurance for injured Tigers guard Nathan Crosswell, who is recovering from a fractured finger and is out of the side indefinitely.

  Despite only meeting his new teammates just before they took on the Adelaide 36ers on Saturday night, Rose nailed a handy three-pointer with his first-ever shot in the league during his stint on court.

  Melbourne defeated the Sixers 89-87 for its fourth straight win, which elevated the Tigers to sixth on the ladder (9-12).

  ''Being a shooter, if I have that opportunity, I'm going to go for it and do what I do so I can help get them over the line and that's what I did,'' Rose said yesterday.

  ''I just want to play my part and make a difference.''

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