Whilst the headline to this article may be somewhat premature, the hype certainly suggests that we will see a National Basketball League in Sydney next season and that the likely name of that team will be the Sydney Kings. Announcements by the NBL have been somewhat delayed, as they've pushed back the date for final submissions by parties interested in entering teams in the 2010/11 Australian NBL competition.

Those delays have reportedly come from a combination of three teams looking to make bids for next season and needing more time to finalise their proposals -- being the Sydney consortium, an entry from Brisbane looking to revive the Bullets and the renewal of the Cairns Taipans licence. Word is that the Brisbane bid has come up short, whilst the Taipans are unlikely to have the legs due to financial reasons. Cairns' team has been run through a community-based model, relying on devoted fans and the surity provided by a $1 million bank guarantee by the Cairns Regional Council. Team president Denis Donaghy has reportedly been working feverishly to keep the team afloat, but things don't sound good at this stage.

Whilst the headline to this article may be somewhat premature, the hype certainly suggests that we will see a National Basketball League in Sydney next season and that the likely name of that team will be the Sydney Kings. Announcements by the NBL have been somewhat delayed, as they've pushed back the date for final submissions by parties interested in entering teams in the 2010/11 Australian NBL competition.

Those delays have reportedly come from a combination of three teams looking to make bids for next season and needing more time to finalise their proposals -- being the Sydney consortium, an entry from Brisbane looking to revive the Bullets and the renewal of the Cairns Taipans licence. Word is that the Brisbane bid has come up short, whilst the Taipans are unlikely to have the legs due to financial reasons. Cairns' team has been run through a community-based model, relying on devoted fans and the surity provided by a $1 million bank guarantee by the Cairns Regional Council. Team president Denis Donaghy has reportedly been working feverishly to keep the team afloat, but things don't sound good at this stage.

Editor's Note: Haggard of Can't Buy A Basket continues with the great NBL content today, as the Finals series continues, with a comic focusing on James Harvey of the Gold Coast Blaze. Along with R-Diddy, Haggard puts out some hilarious Australian basketball-related work at CBAB -- definitely worth checking out.

Click on the comic to see it in larger format.

Now have a look at CBAB's NBL mock advertising piece.

Editor's Note: The ever-awesome Haggard of Can't Buy a Basket has been good enough to provide us with a preview of the NBL 2010 Semi-Final series, as the world of Australian basketball gets down to the business end of things. Being overseas myself, I rely on CBAB to get my fill of NBL analysis, humour and recaps. In the future you'll see more great articles from Haggard here.

NBL Semi Final Previews

With the regular season now complete, half the teams are taking forced holidays. The remaining four teams prepare to knuckle down and focus on winning and being crowned with NBL supremacy for the 2009/10 season.

Gone this season are the sudden death elimination finals which did the league no favors. Elimination finals don't really decide who the better team is. It's a game of Chance where a team is hoping they are on and their opponents are off.... But that's another story. On with the previews.

Today's news from the world of Australian basketball includes a whole mess of videos -- we love videos. And links -- we like links too.