13 things to look forward to for 2013 in Indian basketball

Happy New Year Indian Basketball Fans! If you’ve recovered from the revelries from the last day of 2012, I recommend you ring in the new year the best way possible: find the nearest basketball court, lace up your sneaks and get back to working on that jump shot.

Or you can celebrate it in (probably) the second best way possible: read about how hoops in India can be taken to the next level by the time December 31st rolls around again! With every passing year, hoops in India is taking another step to becoming a bigger game with better results, better organisation, and more popularity amongst the common fans. So here are the top 13 things that we can look forward to for 2013:

1. Every year, the best Indian basketball players and teams celebrate the first day of the year in their most natural state: playing top level hoops! The Indian Senior National Championship for Men and Women is held in a week joining the old year with the new one. This year’s championship tipped off in Ludhiana, Punjab on December 28 and will conclude on January 4th. In a few days, we will find out if the hosts Punjab Men have the talent to repeat as champions. And in the Women’s division, it will be the opportunity for Indian Railways to put a stamp on the past decade by winning their 10th consecutive National Championship.

2. Satnam Singh Bhamara recently turned 17. If you’ve been a follower of Indian hoops for the past few years, maybe I should say that he just turned 17. The 7-footed teenager has been improving gradually over the past few years at the IMG Academy in Florida, and has been making his appearances on the Indian hoops scene during his holidays. This year, he is already a part of Punjab’s senior team and is showing that he can dominate amongst the country’s best players even at his young age. Satnam will join the 11th grade in High School this year. Indian fans will be keeping a close eye on his development to see if he can truly become India’s great big basketball hope.

3. Back in September, the Basketball Federation of India (BFI) named former NBDL American Coach Scott Flemming as the new head coach of India’s Senior National Men’s team. But it won’t be until 2013 that the new coach will get to properly spend some time working with and honing his players. Flemming will be working with India’s youth/junior players and training some Indian coaches too, but his work will ultimately be judged on how he leads the senior men. India has been improving on the junior levels but have stagnated a little amongst the seniors. Flemming’s challenge will be to construct a team that that gel well together in time for the big Asian championships.

4. More BFI/IMG Reliance School Leagues which, hopefully, lead up to better organised College Leagues. BFI/IMG Reliance have been organising school basketball leagues in Delhi, Mumbai, Punjab, Chennai and Bangalore the past few years. Indian youngsters will be hoping that these leagues can be expanded to come into their smaller towns as well and serve as a good platform to spot early talent. Eventually, these leagues can serve as a good model for setting up BFI’s official college leagues too.

5. Once again, the best and the brightest of Indian hoops will come together at the start of the summer in Mumbai for Indian Basketball’s All Star Weekend. The last few years has seen this event – held at the legendary Nagpada YMCA Courts in Mumbai – gain immense popularity amongst the locals in the area. India’s best Men and Women players are invited to take part to play in All Star Games as well as exciting Dunk and Shooting Tournaments.

6. Nearly every average-sized Indian school or college has a basketball court, but the state of our facilities is still pretty backward compared to the quickly advancing infrastructure abroad. If India hopes to create a legion of young basketball players for the next generation, our government needs to build More Indoor Basketball Courts. There is a dearth of good indoor facilities which means that bad weather like rain or searing heat keeps too many players away from practice time. It also means that the outdoor concrete courts degrade very quickly and can prove an injury hazard to many of our best players, who still practice regularly on those surfaces. Cities like Nagpur and Raipur have taken an impressive step forward by building some impressive facilities, and good indoor facilities already exist for the general public in some of the bigger cities. We need a lot more, and perhaps 2013 can be the year when a few more ‘structures in construction’ are finally completed, and a lot more plans are laid out to build new structures.

7. A large number of international basketball tournaments will be held in 2013, so there will be ample opportunity for Indian hoop fans to follow Indian basketball teams in action against Asian opponents. The biggest tournament will be the 2013 FIBA Asia Championship, slated to be held in Lebanon in August. The FIBA Asia Championship for Women will also be held this year, as will the FIBA Asia Championships for Youth (U16) Boys and Girls in separate events. This means that this year, we will get to catch up with Indian talent now and Indian talent of the future in both the genders! In addition to the FIBA Asia Championships, the 2nd Asian Youth Games are set to be held in Nanjing (China) and India may have an opportunity to take part in the basketball competition at the event. For all the international tournaments, it is likely that India will be in qualifying tournaments against South Asian rivals back on home soil.

8. This year, we will also move into another round of the annual National Basketball Championships around the country for different age groups across India. The Senior Nationals will conclude in a few days, and in a month from now, some of the top club teams will also play in the Federation Cup. From the summer onwards, championships for Sub-Juniors (U14), Youth (U16), Junior (U18), before another iteration of the Seniors for both men and women, will be held featuring the participation of most of the Indian states. Each National Championship has its own story line, and each one features breakout stars and teams that come to define the future of the game. It will be interesting to look out for the battle brewing between Chhattisgarh and Kerala Girls’ teams in the underage divisions. Tournaments like these give a platform to Indians from every corner of the country to come together and showcase their skills.

9. From May – September, the NBA can take advantage of the post-season and the off-season to send current and former NBA players from the world’s most exciting basketball league to India to help promote the game. Last year, former players like Muggsy Bogues, Robert Horry and Luc Longley came to India. With his team missing the playoffs, Brandon Jennings of the Milwaukee Bucks visited in the summer too. The NBA whetted the fans appetites when they featured the likes of Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol over two years ago. Fans in India will be hoping that more big stars are invited to our shores this year too.

10. Fans will also be hoping for the continued expansion of the NBA’s grassroots basketball events around the nation, such as the Jr. NBA/Jr. WNBA clinics, the NBA’s 3×3 tournaments, and the Mahindra NBA Challenge. These events have been held around the calendar year in various Indian cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, Ludhiana, Thiruvanathapuram, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, and more. We hope to see kids in more cities wearing the official NBA jerseys of these events with pride!

11. India’s greatest basketball player – perhaps of all time – is Geethu Anna Jose, the woman who has played professionally in Australia and Thailand, and who has even come within an inch of a WNBA roster spot. Jose has dominated the domestic scene for the past decade but her ambitions remain to conquer professional hoops around the world too. She is getting older but her continued high-caliber play may earn her another set of trials with the WNBA. Indian hoop fans will hope that she can finally fulfill her dream of playing at the highest level of basketball in the world. But with decent pro leagues for women springing up in other parts of Asia and Europe, Jose always has a shot to make it in another country like she did with her Indian Railways teammate Anitha Paul Durai in Thailand last year.

12. Towards the end of 2012, the Savio Cup – India’s most prestigious club basketball tournament – was held as usual in Matunga, Mumbai. But in an exciting twist in last year’s tournament, three former NBA players – Jerome Williams, Paul Grant, and Anthony Bonner – took part with their team named Sportspower to electrify the crowd. Will they be back again this year? Will they be able to coax more former NBAers to play in front of the Mumbai crowd against India’s best?

13. It’s been in the pipeline for years now, but could ’13 be the lucky number, the lucky year, when the BFI finally launches India’s first ever professional basketball league? IMG Reliance has been working closely with the BFI for a long time to find the perfect time and platform to organise basketball’s version of the IPL, but the plans have faced some delays, as things in India generally tend to do.

A pro league will be a dream come true for so many of India’s best players who have so far only earned playing the sport as semi-professionals in random tournaments. A league will give them a chance at a guaranteed salary and more exposure under better organisation. It will also help create more jobs for others involved with the game in India, like coaches and referees. And of course, hoop fans will finally be able to wear the name of their own city clubs with pride and create a new culture of basketball fanship in the country!