The Hoops Cooperative presents

CAIRNS—Australian national team assistant coach Shane Heal has finally discovered the name of the league that he has been contracted to commentate.  Joining Brian Taylor in the Foxsports commentary booth, Shane Heal watched the Cairns Taipans comfortably defeat the Gold Coast Blaze tonight at the Cairns Convention Centre.

When asked to comment on the national league just a week prior to the start of the season, Shane Heal was at a loss to comment. "What league?" Heal told The West Australian newspaper.

"I thought Fox called me out to Cairns for a well deserved holiday after helping them out so many times with commentary in the past," Heal told our source. "I didn’t even know the Taipans were still around."

"Turns out the new-NBL exists and is actually still called the NBL," Heal said in a surprised tone. "Who would’ve thought the league could’ve survived the retirement of The Hammer... again?"

"The Hammer leaves Sydney. Soon after they fold. The Hammer leaves the Dragons. Soon after they fold. Even Brisbane struggled with the help of a billionaire owner to survive without me. Coincidence? I think not!"

SYDNEY--As has become a tradition of Basketball Australia’s quarterly meetings, the issue of a switch of season has been brought up for discussion, a league spokesman stated. The last major switch of season occurred in 1998 when the league went from a winter sport to a summer sport.  This coincided with the already existent steady decline in popularity of the sport.

“Of course, we haven’t agreed on the most appropriate switch of season for the national league yet,” Basketball Australia chief Larry Sengstock said following the meeting. “However, to demonstrate that our discussions regarding this issue are not completely futile and do produce definite decisions leading to tangible outcomes, we have unanimously voted to approve the switch from spring to summer for the 1st of December. This additionally keeps us in line with FIBA standards which state that ‘FIBA competitions must adhere to the same seasonal nomenclature as is standard in each respective country’. This puts us even more in line with FIBA standards.”

“This marks yet another productive outcome for Basketball Australia, as we also voted a few weeks ago in favour of a switch from winter to spring on September 1,” Sengstock added.