Fear and loathing in British basketball: how civil war is damaging existing clubs and fans - Nick Westby

And all of it, shamefully, played out in public, and all of it, sadly, to the detriment of the fans. There aren’t many of them, granted, in comparison to the more mainstream sports in this country, but they are no less loyal or financially supportive of their teams and the sport.

They have been left behind, ignored even, over the last 10 months in a charge sheet of mis-steps that reads thus:

Collapse of 777 Partners forces death of long-standing British Basketball League and British Basketball Federation (BBF) removing the licence to run the league;

Consortium of nine existing clubs quickly forms Super League Basketball to get a season on, and is awarded the licence to run the league, not having enough time, or taking enough time - it would seem - to write a constitution or properly understand the terms and conditions;

In January, five of the nine clubs approve to increase the import rule from nine to 12 players per team, a rule amendment within the constitution, the SLB says, but badly communicated;

A week later, but having been brewing for some time, the BBF grants an external company exclusive rights to run the league next season, right under the noses of SLB - a classic gazumping;

Then Vaughn Millette, the American entrepreneur who bought a 65 per cent stake in Sheffield Sharks in the summer and took on the role of interim chair of the league having played an active role in saving it, fires out a series of ill-judged social media posts alleging racism and bias against an official;

Atiba Lyons, the Sharks’ head coach, the only black man in that role in the league, chooses his words far more carefully with a heartfelt statement alleging unconscious bias against him;

Referees go on strike, games are postponed, Millette resigns as league chair, officials come back, but not for Sheffield’s games;

Then last week, the BBF - a governing body that wanted nothing to do with the race row unfolding on their own doorstep despite repeated requests from this correspondent for comment on whether Lyons’ claims were being investigated - return, confirming that former Euroleague acting CEO Marshall Glickman and the newly-formed GBB League is pumping £15m in upfront and will operate the professional league from September 2026;

The BBF may just need the existing nine clubs of SLB - which has publicly threatened legal action that the governing body rejects and that they have so clearly overlooked in this process - to carry on operating a ‘club run league’ next year before, presumably, they tell them to bugger off next September.

That should bring us up to date.

Whether you’re versed in this situation or not - it stinks, and is an awful look for basketball, a sport that in December, amid all this, was awarded its biggest financial injection from UK Sport and Sport England since before the London Olympics of 2012, meaning the Government should be looking into this unholy mess.

Understandably, fans of British basketball, pundits who have been covering the intricacies of the sport for much longer than this correspondent, are up in arms.

Where has the consultation of that lifeblood of the sport been? Why are the teams that kept the professional game going in this country, who have been champions and hubs for basketball in their communities for decades, being so disrespectfully abandoned? Where - in a world of sporting equality - is mention of the women’s league from the governing body, which BBL before it and SLB now, has carried along with them, in good times and bad?

The BBF say that with this new league they want “to evaluate opportunities in population centres currently without a presence such as Liverpool, Leeds, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Birmingham”.

Let me save you the trouble in Leeds. The city doesn’t want basketball. It had its chance a decade ago. Hard-working basketball lovers like Matt Newby and Mark Mills built Leeds Force from a university programme and took them into the BBL, but in a sporting city obsessed with United and passionate about the Rhinos - the Force stood no chance.

A successful ice hockey team is carving out its little niche in a city that has no room for traditional sports like rugby union, while the netballers, who have been granted elite status, still have to play their home games down the road in Sheffield at an arena that was, wait for it…built for basketball and two teams that have served the sport since 1961. There is no 2,500-3,000-seater arena in Leeds to accommodate netball or basketball. And for all the bluster about building new markets, has the BBF not looked at its existing clubs that attract 2,000 on a good day and thought, maybe there’s not a huge appetite for basketball after all, let alone building one from scratch?

There is talk across the pond of the NBA expanding into Europe with a continental league and placing a team in either, or both, Manchester or London. That has more chance of working, isolated clubs with the established NBA to market them.

This new league, without the support of existing clubs and fans, is fanciful at best.

An example of the schism within the game came this week when the BBF issued a statement saying it was investigating the SLB for bringing in external referees not on their approved list of officials during the recent crisis. Given I had repeatedly asked the BBF if they were looking into the claims of racism and bias made by people in the Sharks organisation, and was greeted time and again with this line: “under the terms of its interim licence, SLB Ltd is responsible for the management of officiating in the men’s professional game and any associated complaints”, then this sudden intervention smacks of being nothing more than the tit for tat the governing body has been telling us it doesn’t want to get into.

The whole saga is unedifying and presently, un-ending. On Sunday, roughly 1,800 people will cheer from the stands at the Canon Medical Arena - a venue proportionately adequate for British interest in basketball - to see if Sheffield Sharks can keep alive their SLB title quest against the Newcastle Eagles, who four days earlier became the first British men’s team to reach the final of a European competition.

Two storied franchises in British basketball with self-built arenas and growing fanbases, who should be looking to the future with optimism, not fear and loathing.