MyBasketball

The senior men’s team recently took part in the African Championship in Libya. Despite this being an opportunity for South Africa to go out there and create relationships with other African nations and see how we could learn from them, our national body Basketball South Africa (BSA) missed that opportunity with various blunders along the way… Then there was the Florida State University visit to our shores that went unnoticed, well almost but BSA didn’t cover itself in glory in that scenario either (No proper kit, lack of proper communication).

With BSA being in office for almost a year, there have been a lot of positive to come out of this new regime and other things that have remained the same or gotten worse. With everyone waiting to see what structures and plans that they would put in place to lift the sport from it’s smouldering ashes, I feel that they might have missed an opportunity to engage the various stake holders and get the help that they need.

Anyway I would like to focus on the men national teams that have had a rough time of late. If there is a positive to come out of the new regime, it is the amount of games that the various national teams have participated in. From the U16s competing in Zimbabwe with dignity to our ladies senior team qualifying outright for the African Championship later this year and the Men senior team going to represent the country in Libya.

That’s was quite the busy program for the teams but the thing that BSA didn’t look at is the finer details, it’s all good to say that we are taking part in competitions all over the world but if you don’t take care of how the teams will prepare leading up to such events or how they will get to those events and be treated then they might as well not enter and save everyone the headache involved. This is why I believe that instead of jumping onto all these tournaments, BSA would have been better served making sure that the various structures within the national setup are ready for international competition. I am sure that the players and coaches would have been ok to wait another year without competition if they knew that when it eventually came back it was going to be worth it. Read the rest of this entry →