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The inaugural Elite Classic High Stakes Hoop$ tournament, set to be renamed 'So You Think You Can Get An NBL Contract', concludes today as the Rays play the Coasters, allegedly in front of a potential crowd.

High Stakes Hoops (HSH) news in brief:

Sedale Threatt and Daryl McDonald keep Australian basketball tradition of nepotism alive
As Marcus Wright failed in his campaign to make his father a coach of a HSH team, Sedale Threatt and D-Mac have honoured Australian basketball's proud tradition of nepotism by recruiting and playing their own sons. 

Al Green's team proposes alternative to shirts versus skins: blacks versus whites
As tournament organisers struggled to wash all player uniforms before the Monarchs scheduled game, Al Green's (nearly) all-black Monarchs team volunteered to adopt a concept similar to shirts vs skins: blacks vs whites. However, Monarch's cracker Brad Williamson declined to paint his skin and talk up his own game.

Tigers sign Tragardh, force him to withdraw from tournament
Tigers remain favourites as the most hated club in the NBL, in spite of the Kings return, as rumours circulate that the Tigers signed Tragardh, only to promptly force him to withdraw from the tournament. The Tigers, however, have reportedly had cold feet in acquiring Tragardh, citing concerns over his "lack of offenses".  Instead, the Tigers are pursuing ex-Hawk Ty McKee due to his offensive prowess; in particular, the Tigers are impressed by his driving offenses.

'Game breaker' prompts coaches to bust out Goorjian's play book from his Kings days
As the 'game breakers' rewards three-point shooting, HSH coaches scrambled to use Goorjian's 3-point centric offensive structure from the Kings days.  

Markovic does a Markovic to the Cyclones
In true Markovic-style, Steven Markovic has pulled out from his HSH team, the Cyclones.  He is now deciding which club he will elect to play for next so that he can disappoint them by defecting without warning.

Players stunned that teamwork wins games
Marquee players such as Corey Williams and Julius Hodge were stunned as the teams that don't merely rely on individual play proceeded to the HSH Grand Final.  The stunning revelation that teamwork, chemistry and defense wins games has just reached the NBA D-league in the United States, but none of the D-league players care.

Meanwhile, as their respective teams failed to make the semi-finals, self-promoting guard Corey Williams is becoming increasingly skeptical of the notion that self-promotion involving public declarations of both personal and team-based superiority prior to games increases his team's chances of victory. When told about this, rival self-promoter Julius Hodge claimed he questioned the aforementioned notion prior to Williams, and would demonstrate so by challenging him to a game of one-on-one which he would "inevitably win".
 
ADELAIDE—Alternative hoops tournament High Stakes Hoops is awaiting a response from aspiring media dictator Senator Stephen Conroy to release the full roster list for each team in next week’s exciting new week-long tournament.

Conroy has refused to release the full list of names of participants saying it would provide people instant access to the currently banned material. As the list hasn’t been classified as yet, its current status is ‘Refused Classification (RC)’ and is to be withheld from public viewing.

High Stakes Hoops has been required to stall the production of playing uniforms as names haven’t been granted approval. “We may need to resort to nicknames like those stupid Wildcats jerseys from the early ‘90s,” a source within High Stakes Hoops admitted.

The retardation of the classification process is believed to be due to concern over names on the list that may be offensive to young children, particularly the appearance of the name Sean Lampley. The classification board is considering applying a new classification for the list, “MA: contains immature wankers”, but this would necessitate a re-classification of other material, such as The Footy Show. After providing the free-to-air networks with an unjustified $250m license rebate in February, Conroy said he didn’t want to offend one of his “new best mates”, Eddie McGuire, by reclassifying free-to-air television shows.

Conroy’s office is also concerned about “an apparent drug-related theme” of the tournament. Conroy has stated his concerns over the team names Reef as it “sounds all too similar to Reefers”, the Rush as it “appears to attempt to promote the rush of consuming illicit drugs”, and the Coasters as it “endorses beer consumption, albeit in a table surface-friendly manner”.

In unsurprising related news, this publication has been provided with a leaked document revealing roster lists for next week’s tournament. Senator Stephen Conroy has promptly claimed the list is not current, but an older version that ACMA had used “before we erased the phallic sketches on the side of the document”.

An anonymous hacker has claimed responsibility for the leak. Conroy claims the hacker used the latest in advanced communication technology to steal the list. The hacker allegedly rang Senator Conroy’s office claiming to be Conroy’s local Catholic priest, Father Thomas, requesting updated details of the banned list. The response from Conroy implied that Thomas was an ACMA consultant and included an updated list of banned pedophile sites “for [Thomas’s] perusal” and an updated list of Conroy’s “Top 10 Beats”.