National Basketball League's Cal Bruton Says NBL Should Move Back To Winter

Australia's National Basketball League "is looking backwards to go forwards," according to David Sygall of the SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. The league's "first real star," Cal Bruton, believes that the demerger of Basketball Australia and the NBL, to be finalized within days, "will let the league be free to drive its own destiny." Interim CEO Steve Dunn said at the season launch on Thursday that the plan "would include reviving a Brisbane team, exploring the idea of marquee players and better connecting with its past." However, Bruton said that a key change "should be reverting back to a winter competition, as it was throughout its greatest era" before moving to summer in '98 to avoid the football codes. Bruton: ''The way we jumped into a summer competition, we just ran away from everything. We should go back to winter. We need to bang heads with the big boys" (SMH, 9/20).