2018 Commonwealth Games

Of course Team GB can't compete, the Commonwealth Games are individual nations.

I am not interested in the 3x3 format, but I think if it was the normal game, both England and Scotland could muster decent enough rosters, although Australia would be favourites by a long way.

Only downside to the Glasgow games for me was no basketball, opportunity missed to help push basketball in the city and perhaps get more newbies down to Rocks games.

Think rocks could made more use of main arena if basketball had been in 2014 games

Thanks to the first Guest-Guest for his/her response. I had a feeling that the home nations would send their own squads. But what will their teams do about coaches, administrative infrastructure? Will they just superimpose the organizational mechanics on their existing youth team systems? Are there enough players in each who are up to standard for international competition? Finally, isn't this the sort of thing that FIBA was railing against in the lead-up to London 2012 when it twisted the arms of the home countries' basketball organizations to force them into unifying? How will FIBA respond to this?

The article is ridiculous. Of course FIBA runs basketball, it's bigger than the Commonwealth Games, which are to be honest a complete irrelevance. It's not FIBA's fault that the Scottish government will only fund sports that are in the CWG.

Yep, and Rob Archibald.

Thanks again for the responses, and the guidance on how irrelevant the Commonwealth Games are. Being an American, I didn't know how people felt about them. Actually, national teams are largely irrelevant to my countrymen anyway. (Watch the Olympics? Not when there's a pennant race.) The key for British roundball lies in the league/s getting teams into European play, and attracting attention from the media that way.

So, here's something that's only slightly relevant. The Evening Standard published a much-truncated version of a letter to editor I'd emailed about a pre-Olympics article about basketball's bright future in the UK. It appeared on Friday, 29 July; was headlined, "Basketball is poised to reach new heights in the UK" (in quotation marks); and was accompanied by photos of Luol Deng, Paul George and Danilo Gallinari (because the Pacers and Nuggets will be playing in the next NBA Global Game), and Dara Delevingnelevignienle and Jourdan Dunn. And the piece was dumb -- which may be why i couldn't find it on the Standard's online archive; they were probably too embarrassed to put it there.

My email read:

"I see you've run your annual basketball article, the one that predicts a bright future for the sport in the UK. Stop deluding yourselves and your readers. As long as major media outlets fail to cover the game -- even intermittently -- it will continue stumbling in the dark. It's true that some clubs attract the attention of local reporters, but the Standard, which is ostensibly the metropolitan London newspaper, fails to give any attention to the city's franchise in the British Basketball League. (You know, the league that claims to be 'at the pinnacle of British hoops' -- an ant hill in a field of worm casts -- and professional when, judging by players' salaries, calling it "semi-professional" would be unduly generous.)

"Whenever you or other news-gathering organizations publish a piece about basketball, it invariably mentions the Olympics. So, yes, Team GB will not be on the court in Rio, but you fail to mention that the squad is fighting this summer to qualify for the 2017 Euros -- certainly a far more timely story.

"So, you have two responsibilities to fulfill: 1. provide more coverage of basketball and, 2. do your homework and learn something about the game first. Otherwise, don't bother with next year's article."

That was the original. I'm surprised that the editors left in the line about it having been the Standard's "annual" basketball feature. So they admit it.

New investment in Scotland in lead up to Commonwealth Games...


www.basketballscotland.co.uk/2016/08/31/basketballscotland-receives-280000-investment-from-sportscotland-in-exciting-new-partnership/

As I've written elsewhere, I'm not getting the point of all this.

What are the Rocks getting out of this? Are there piles of quality Scottish players out there queuing up to play in their home country if Sports Scotland subsidise some of the costs? I'm not seeing how the Rocks team is vastly different from normal in terms of Scottish players unless someone else is already contributing to their wages?

What do the WBBL get out of it? Call me a cynic, but how do Caledonia Pride (terrible terrible name btw) plan to finance themselves when the funding runs out? I might be taking an overly negative view on things, but I can see the funding being completely pissed up the wall by the time the Commonwealth games comes around, with the Pride dying shortly afterwards.

Hersey, you also make a good point - what happens to the spine of the Rocks team when it has to piss off to Australia for the first two weeks in April? (If it qualifies)

Edit: I've noticed in the last 5 minutes that the new Scotland coach, Erik Olson, will also be functioning as Rocks asst coach.