For a sport with such a faint pulse at the elite level in Australia, basketball can't afford to lose its last remnants of credibility.
But one of the men behind the Wollongong Hawks' push to be part of the NBL in 1979 fears a lack of foresight could kill the hoops game within 12 months.
John Scott was one of the founding members of the Hawks and stayed with the club for several years as a director.
He still acts as a consultant with the Hawks and played an integral role in helping the club survive last year's financial crisis.
Like just about every other sports follower in the Illawarra, Scott believes the Hawks have been effectively squeezed out of the NewNBL due to the financial requirements of the league's recently released criteria.
"We've been priced out of it," the former Australian Boomers team manager said.
"I'd like to see it work because I want to see basketball go forward again, but 80 per cent of me says it won't work.
"Look at 12 months ago when Brisbane and Sydney and Singapore went out, then you've got two more clubs that have had to be propped up this season, and the league says 'Hey this is not working, let's raise the bar. Let's make it a bit harder.' Just how stupid is that?" he added.
"The bottom line which disappoints me is that here is a club that's done everything asked of it for 30 years. What did we do wrong to be forced out of the league?
"You'd think the league would look at us and say 'They're the only club that has survived 31 seasons, why can't we look at their model?'
"We always paid our players and staff, we paid our bills, we've never defaulted in any payments to the league.
"So to get to this point where we can't raise enough money in the community to sustain a team in this league, that's very disappointing. We've proven we can do it, but under the new financial rules, we can't."
The board in charge of the restructured competition believes eight teams would be an ideal number. The season would start in October and run for 18 weeks, with Fox Sports covering most games under a lucrative deal with the league.
Scott is convinced opportunities for home-grown juniors would dry up and said the league would be better off with a larger competition.
"We need to go backwards to go forwards, rather than go and make this leap of faith all the way up to this new level," he said.
"We had 16 or 18 teams playing and we had a much broader scope of media attention in smaller areas and venues and everyone was talking about basketball.
"I always thought summer would be good, but in hindsight, let's go back to the smaller facilities where you can play in the wintertime where you don't need the air-conditioning.
"Having a broader based competition would make it more attractive for the sport and gives the kids something to aspire to.
"Say there's eight teams, that's 80 players. Half of those people will be imports or naturalised Australians, and that leaves about 40 players that are your core Australian players. Is that good?
"Does that give the late bloomers any avenue to become a good player at the age of 19 or 20? And there's been a lot of those that have played for Australia."
The criteria for next season requires clubs to have $1 million in the bank and an additional $500,000 in paid up capital.
The Hawks' ownership group was expected to lodge an application to play in 2009-10. Everything changed earlier this week when the board decided against making a submission.
Scott said he understood the shareholders' position.
"I've been around for a long time and I've seen a lot of individual owners at different clubs, and they just can't sustain the losses over a long period of time," he said.
"Why would the (the league) put that ($1.5 million figure) in if they don't really want that? Could they have said 'Okay you can forego the million dollar bank guarantee, and instead of $500,000 paid up capital we'll allow you $250,000 and make it the same for every club?'
"But they're not going to get rid of that million dollar bank guarantee because it's defeated the whole purpose of jumping forward and where they want to go."
As much as he wants to see basketball be successful, Scott said he was still coming to terms with the fact the Hawks will soon be extinct.
"This will be the first time ever in my association that no Illawarra or Wollongong basketball team hasn't played in the top level of competition around Australia," he said.
"We've always been there and always been competitive and always been able to sustain that level.
"And we've done that with a lot of locally developed players and a lot of our home-grown players have played all around Australia and around the world.
"We've had players at the Olympic level, we've had administrators and coaches at the Olympic level, but all those opportunities now disappear.
"Whilst I'm a Wollongong person, I was there for basketball and wanted to see the sport grow.
"Having gone through the journey for 30 years, I was always motivated to see basketball grow. It was always a good feeling.
"It's like being in a business and watching a business grow, you feel as if you're achieving something."
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