Manawatu¯ Jets ready for new-look NBL
The Manawatu¯ Jets will take place in this year’s revamped National Basketball League competition after all.
Details for the new competition, which has changed drastically this year due to the effect of Covid-19, was released on Tuesday and the Jets are among the seven teams that will compete this year.
The Jets pulled out of the NBL in April, amid the alert level 4 lockdown, but now they were back in and chairman Kevin Smith said the competition was viable. ‘‘We did a quick count of our sponsors and they could see the value of a fully televised competition every night of the week.’’
This year’s league will be a sixweek, seven-team competition starting on June 23.
The venue and schedule are to be announced.
Smith said this format was ‘‘much more palatable’’.
Tim Mctamney will again coach the side.
The Jets, the Canterbury Rams, new South Auckland side the Franklin Bulls, the Taranaki Mountainairs, the returning Otago Nuggets and the Auckland Huskies will all take part.
The Nuggets haven’t been in the league since 2014.
Teams will assemble and train in Auckland.
There will be a player draft this year and another new feature is a first-team-to-score-sevenpoints tiebreaker instead of the traditional overtime period.
Smith said the draft would make the competition a good contest and the Jets could have the option to draft Manawatu¯ players.
He said teams were likely to be made up of professional players and some students, but could include a handful of imports who were marooned in New Zealand before the country went into lockdown.
NBL general manager Justin Nelson said it had been a big two months pulling the competition together.
‘‘It’s been a really trying situation that everybody across the world has found themselves in.
We’re no different than any other sport or any other business.
‘‘We’ve had to go through a lot of different scenarios and situations working with our teams and players, and our broadcast partners, in order to bring this together.
‘‘I’m really pleased we brought together a really good competition. We obviously had to change and adapt in order to get basketball up and running.’’
He said a lot of work had gone in behind the scenes and now it was a different environment than two months ago.
The season schedule is still to be released, he said.
‘‘We had to come up with something creative and different in order to help our teams in two key areas.
‘‘The first one is providing a player pool to help teams put together a roster, and the second thing is to put together a competitive, balanced competition.’’
He said the competition was wide open and he wanted fans tuning in every night.
‘‘I’m really pleased we brought together a really good competition.’’
Justin Nelson