History
The league commenced in 1979, playing a winter season (April–September) and did so until the completion of the 20th season in 1998. The 1998/99 season, which commenced only months later, was the first season after the shift to the current summer season format (October–April). This shift was an attempt to avoid competing directly against Australia's various football codes.
Despite these issues, at the start of the 2004/05 season the league struck a new television deal with Fox Sports in Australia and a multi-year naming-rights sponsorship deal with electronics manufacturer Philips. In 2007, Philips announced they would not continuing their naming rights sponsorship after the current contract ends in June in response to the National Basketball League wishing to increase the sponsorship deal. On 18 September 2007, the National Basketball League announced Hummer as their naming rights sponsor for the 2007/08 season.
A second Melbourne club, the South Dragons, entered the league in season 2006/07, but pulled out after season 2008/09 in which they were premiers. The NBL became the first Australasian sporting league to field a team from Asia with the Singapore Slingers playing in the 2006/07 and 2007/08 seasons. The Gold Coast Blaze joined the competition in the 2007/08 season and played until the end of the 2011-12 season.
After a turbulent period during 2008 and 2009, when the league lost teams from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, the 2010–11 season saw the return of the Sydney Kings. In 2010, the NBL returned to free-to-air television in Australia for the first time in three years when One started broadcasting 2–3 games a week.
Read more about this topic: National Basketball League (Australasia)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)