In a stunning piece of news for Basketball Australia, today they announce that former New South Wales Premier, Kristina Keneally will become Chair of the board. 

Originally from the USA, Keneally grew up playing basketball through high school. She was the first female Premier of NSW from 2009-2011. Her influence in the Labor party may be highly effective in pushing for federal funding for basketball -- a sport that typically struggles to get the money that the football codes attract.

Currently serving as the member for Heffron in State Parliament, Ms. Keneally said she saw huge opportunities for basketball to build on its recent gains.

“As a sport, basketball in Australia has some unique advantages that we are only just starting to capitalise on,” Ms. Keneally said. “Our incredible strength in terms of mass participation numbers, with over one million people regularly playing basketball, is largely untapped thus far. The continued excellence of our national teams and competitions in what is a truly global sport is not just a source of immense pride, but also a source of significant potential corporate opportunities.

“I am passionate about sports in general and basketball in particular,” Ms. Keneally added.  “I look forward to working with the rest of the Board to build further upon all the good work already done over the past few years.  I am genuinely excited to have been entrusted with this role.”

At the conclusion of Round 7 of the iiNet NBL Championship, when Jamar Wilson of the Cairns Taipans was awarded the Player of the Week award, I noticed a trend. At that point, players from seven different teams had won the award in each of the seven rounds of the season. The only teams yet to have players to take out the honours were the Gold Coast Blaze and the Wollongong Hawks.

And what do you know, in Round 8 the Player of the Week was Adris "2Hard2Guard" Deleon of the Blaze. That just left the Hawks as Robinson Crusoe on the POTW island.

2011/12 iiNet NBL Championship Player of the Week Winners

Round 1 – Patty Mills (Melbourne Tigers)

Round 2 – Shawn Redhage (Perth Wildcats)

Round 3 – Julian Khazzouh (Sydney Kings)

Round 4 – Daniel Johnson (Adelaide 36ers)

Round 5 – Gary Wilkinson (New Zealand Breakers)

Round 6 – Eddie Gill (Townsville Crocodiles)

Round 7 – Jamar Wilson (Cairns Taipans)

Round 8 – Adris Deleon (Gold Coast Blaze)

Last night was the Hawks' chance to continue that streak, as they took on the Townsville Crocodiles. As you can see on the video below, the Hawks put in a mammoth effort in the final seconds... 

...but unfortunately for the Wollongong players and the law of streaks (whatever that is), the Hawks came up one point losers. Surely that would eliminate anything but a huge Hawks player's effort to win the weekly award. Tim Coenraad was their best, with 22 points, 4 rebounds and 2 assists --  good, but not good enough to warrant award consideration on a defeated team.

[Video courtesy of andthefoul.net]

Now, this is not really my idea of romanticism, but hey, each to their own. It certainly depends on what is important to the couple in question.

Check out this video as a marriage proposal happens at an NBL game on the Melbourne Tigers' home court.

(image credit: zlatkobatistich.com)

It really does seem like Shaquille O'Neal is mellowing and reducing the ego a bit with age. Or is he just playing the diplomat in talking platitudes about Kobe Bryant because he is in Los Angeles promoting his book?

This is a book that I look forward to leafing through. I'm sure that the Big Aristotle has more than a few interesting stories to share.

So, news has come that the NBA lockout is over. I suppose we're duty-bound to be jumping around the room in glee and excitement?

Should I be apologising that I'm not?

The fact is, as I mentioned here, the lockout was yet another impetus to lead me to question if basketball should play such an overriding presence in my life. The conclusion was: there are a stack of other things which we all could be spending our time on, rather than obsessing over a bunch of sports stars and their labour disputes.

Please don't take this as a dark, cynical, woe-is-me attitude. It's not. I still love the game. I just don't enjoy some of the aspects that surround the game.

Hey, I still enjoy many of those aspects that surround the game too. Things like this are cool to hear. I'm just taking this moment to dedicate more of my time to other things and to not be too one-dimensional.

Will it be great to have the NBA back on our screens? Definitely. Am I over-joyed, skipping down the street that this season is back? Not really. Can we even call it a season?

Being a shortened season, much like the last post-lockout season we witnessed, it will have a great big asterisk next to it in the record books.

I guess it will feel a bit more like an entree to the 2012/13 season, when things turn entirely back to normal... and then we wait for six years time when both parties have the right to dissolve the existing Collective Bargaining Agreement once again. Will lessons be learnt from this year's experience, or will we see another lockout?

The Next Media Animation guys in Taiwan have once again taken a light-hearted look at the lockout resolution, with one of their animated videos. Some of the likenesses are pretty horific, but some are spot on. Either way, it's a fun look at things.

Editor's Note:Rachel Weerasooriya is an Australian basketball fan with some serious opinions on the game, both in Australia's NBL and on the current situation afflicting the NBA. Here she voices her opinions on the NBA labour struggle which has gridlocked the game that is loved by so many.

Put your hand up if the Mavs vs Heat game on June 12 was the last time you thought you’d watch an NBA game for a while? It almost seems like a distant memory now. The ups and downs of the lockout have been well covered, however some of the reasons behind it (due to the media ban in discussing said topics) aren’t all that obvious to the naked eye.

The overwhelming majority of fans on the NBA Facebook page and those commenting on media articles and the like, tend to centre around comments such as these:

“It’s just millionaires vs billionaires. The owners are greedy.”
“I’m boycotting the NBA when it comes back. Greedy players.”

It turns out that in June in particular, when the NBAPA and NBA started discussing topics (that would be later covered in much more significant detail) there were already a few massive red flags that would likely result in a lockout. Some knew that the last Finals game would be the last for a little while, and that the following season would either be shortened as a result, or not go ahead at all. The truth, as always, requires a lot more digging and cross-referencing than what is seen on the surface. It’s funny just how many subjects fall into that category, so allow me to drop some facts on your head. They tend to come in handy when engaging in a healthy debate.

One of the topics the players and owners have not been in agreement on is the BRI. Well, what is it? A shortened form of a guy called Brian? Not quite.

The BRI (Basketball Related Income) is essentially a split between the owners and players of who takes home how much revenue in the form of ticket sales, parking, broadcast rights, concessions, etc. The current split is 57- 43% in favour of the players. Yes, you heard that right. More on that later.

There may be no NBA season in 2011/12, but that doesn't mean that there are no sneaker releases. In this video, Kevin Durant (Oklahoma City Thunder) talks to Nike shoe designer, Leo Chang, about his new Nike KD IV shoe. The adaptive fit seems to be a useful feature, amongst all of the design aesthetic details.

Currently I'm reading the brilliant Jerry West autobiography, West By West, My Charmed Tormented Life. Amongst many illuminating sequences in the book, is this thought from West regarding the treatment of sports stars as idols:

"I have been around sports long enough by now to partly understand why this hero worship exists, why the fans -- a whole community, really -- need to have something or someone to look up to and be proud of, to live through vicariously and perhaps fill a void they feel in themselves, but I know the negative side of that as well, the side in which the hero turns out ot have clay feet. The whole glorifying of athletes is, in the end, not healthy, not healthy at all, and dangerous, often leading to terrible disillusionment. One minute fans can love and be for you, and be ugly toward you the next."

He then goes on to cite the Tiger Woods scenario of 2009 as a key example of how fans could turn on a star in disappointment, upon the revelation that the star is not as perfect as they had first imagined -- having used their on-field performance as an imagined indicator of their entire life-scape.

I do wonder however, whether he also had a star closer to him in mind, in Kobe Bryant. Having been acquired by the Los Angeles Lakers under West's watch as General Manager, Bryant was embroiled in a sex scandal involving a hotel employee in Eagle, Colorado. The matter, which was ultimately settled out of court, unavoidably changed the opinions that many of Bryant's fans had of him as an unshakably perfect character (and solidified the hatred perpetuated by those that saw him as an enemy).

In a perhaps even more pronounced way, the hero worship of thousands, if not millions, of Cleveland Cavaliers fans was shattered and flipped 180 degrees with the departure of LeBron James to South Beach. Having idolised this phenom on the basketball court for years, regarding him as a saviour to the franchise, if not their own lives, suddenly Cavs fans were dealt with the blow that King James did not share the same benevolence for his subjects as he was afforded.

These are but a sprinkling of the numerous situations where sports stars have turned worship into disgust, anger and hatred. They have been met with inate disdain, on the back of other-worldly worship. This in turn begs the question: why do these stars evoke that passion from us in the first place?

Do we take sports worship too far? Is it worrying that the actions of someone we possibly will never meet in our lifetimes can affect our collective psyche so greatly?

Surely the answers to the latter questions are "yes" and "yes".

The question as to why we are so drawn in by sports stars and sport in general is much more complex. We are impassioned by sports fandom for a great number of reasons, many of them noble. The idolisation of the players in that same sport is something which we should be able to separate and distinguish from the sport itself.

It is easy to forget that sportsmen and sportswomen are indeed people. They have real world personalities, problems and idiosyncrasies off the court (and sometimes on it). Of course, ultimately we already know this, but choose to ignore it, elevating some sports stars to demi-god status -- capable of eluding the same problems that trouble us mere mortals.

And then we arrive at the NBA Lockout.

Suddenly the 'Average Joe' is analysing a labour dispute which does not affect him economically with the fervour which should be reserved for greater world issues.  People are proclaiming on a daily basis how their lives feel empty without the NBA season, which normally would be in ful swing by now.

As basketball fans, we've all done it.

However, I would implore you to step back for a second. Perhaps it is time to seize this opportunity to enrich your life with new interests, or allow more time for the ones you already have.

We are all greater than one single definition. Many of us like to define ourselves as "ballers" or "rock chicks" or "artists", but in reality we are much deeper people than any 140 character profile can describe. 

With the lack of NBA basketball of late, I have used the opportunity (no, not challenge, but opportunity) to endulge in my other passions -- the things that I had neglected. Those passions may be people close to us, they may be other sports, they may be politics, music, the arts or even our careers and education.

The reality is, West's words carry a lot of truth. We can assign too much weight to the actions of 400-odd athletic men on a 94 x 50 foot court. And who better to question the rationale of NBA-worship than the man whose very image is imortalised on the NBA logo?

As Charles Barkley has been quoted as saying, "I'm not a role model... Just because I dunk a basketball doesn't mean I should raise your kids."

No doubt the economic realities for the two key parties involved (the owners and the players) mean that the lockout will not endure for too much longer. However, for the remaining duration, try (as I will) to enjoy the other aspects of life. 

In one of those stories that we can only snigger at due to it all concluding happily, 7'6" former-NBA beanpole Shawn Bradley has had his custom-made, huge bicycle stolen, but thankfully subsequently recovered.

The Associated Press has the story:

At 7-foot-6, former NBA center Shawn Bradley needs just about everything custom-made, from clothes and chairs to countertops and doorways.

It’s why he was bummed when his custom-build Trek road bicycle, complete with an 80 centimeter carbon fiber-aluminum frame, was stolen last Friday.

“There’s no way they could have ridden it away,” Bradley said Thursday morning. “It’s kind of baffling. I think it will turn up.”

He was right.

A random search of a residence by state probation and parole officials turned up the bike Thursday afternoon in the town of Murray, where Bradley has a home, police said. Joshua Carter, 34, was arrested on suspicion of possession of stolen property and felony theft, Murray police Sgt. Brian Wright said.

Bradley, who has been riding the bicycle since packing on the pounds after his retirement following 13 NBA seasons, was thrilled at the news.

Now, can you imagine an average-sized person trying to escape on that thing? I imagine it would be something akin to a man trying to escape on a three-year old girl's bicycle: farcical.

The photo above, which shows Bradley, with family, on his massive motorbike, is clearly not of the bike in question. But it had to be shown. These photos (which come via the shop that made it) are:

Further to the article:

They certainly weren’t going to ride it — as it is about 50 percent larger than what a normal-sized person would ride. Trek never even included a serial number when it built the bike in 2005 because it is so unique.

“I’m guessing he just walked it away,” Wright said of the suspect, who stands just 6-foot.

Thankfully, Bradley indeed did get the bike back ultimately. A fortunate ending to the story, as men of his size can't simply go to their nearest bicycle shop and purchase a new one.

In other Bradley-related news, the former shotblocker (and recipient of numerous famous dunkings-on) will appear as a downloadable character in NBA 2K12. The one-time mormon missionary to Australia, despite retiring from the NBA in 2005, has not disappeared from the headlines just yet.

Those crazy guys at Next Media Animation have come up with another short cartoon detailing an aspect of the NBA. This time it's the current NBA labour negotiations.