A COUPLE of things have been grinding my gears over the last couple of weeks.
Firstly, the Sydney Kings’ quixotic approach to building their roster; a breathtaking exercise in exasperating hubris.
Basketball teams are like a kebab; they require a balance of unidentified mystery meat and salad. The Kings built their team with plenty of lettuce, some of the best in fact, but forgot to add the meat.
A kebab lacking the charred remains of a once noble beast, like a basketball team lacking key players, is a waste of time. You don’t make friends with salad, and you don’t win championships with a shooting guard playing point and no centre.
The ten-games wait to bring in the imports they needed was an exercise in Tantric basketball, well beyond my comprehension. Followers of the royal purple had to suffer through abysmal basketball and head coach Andrew Gaze has aged to the point where it he is no longer distinguishable from his 81-year-old father.
Meanwhile, Michael Carrera’s ankle injury last week against Melbourne United was another cruel blow to the Taipans’ 17-18 championship chances. Although the boys grabbed the game by the onions and vanquished the terrifying Victorian juggernaut without him, his absence leaves a huge gap in the roster.
What ground my gears into dust in the aftermath, was seeing the fossilised remains of a former NBL player taking shots at the injured Carrera on Twitter. He tweeted that the Venezuelan’s absence was positive, as the Taipans were better off without him.
Given that Carrera saw these tweets, for his own safety, I hope the former great is now locked in a deep bunker on an isolated Pacific archipelago. Angering the Volcano God is not a good idea.
Speaking of former NBL greats, Corey “Homicide” Williams’ work on the Fox commentary team is controversial, entertaining, mystifying and magnificent. His passion has ruffled feathers, but he’s the Gucci-wearing, life-size lightning rod that the league needs to drive discussion across social media.
The former MVP attacked the rim with reckless abandon in his day, and he’s doing the same thing now with microphone in hand. The league needs authentic characters, and you don’t get much more real than New York’s finest.
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