Keeping basketball out of the rubble

Jul 13, 2011 Sports

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By Edison Jefford
The national basketball federation likes to say that it is as strong as its sub-associations whenever it is questioned on performance. If that is true, based on the performance of sub-associations over the last six months, we do not have a very strong national federation.
The window of analysis in this assessment was given as six months because that is the amount of time two newly elected sub-associations in Georgetown and Linden have been in power.

If one is to look at the track record of new sub-associations, and use that in the context of the performance of the national federation, then basketball in Guyana is in trouble.
But that is not entirely true. It might sound contradictory, but the primary stakeholder of the sport in Guyana, the national federation, has been doing some work.
The real problem is its correlation to the statement that it is as strong as its three sub-associations when those sub-associations have not been producing results for the time that they have occupied office.
Fair enough, six months is not a long time to get deep into the action of a Strategic Plan, but with the time already past, the sub-associations, the Linden Amateur Basketball Association (LABA) and the Georgetown Amateur Basketball Association (GABA), are yet to produce a development plan publicly, commence action on such a plan and update us on results.
Note: I have ignored mentioning the Berbice association because as I understand, that association is not fully constituted. The national federation must take the blame here for exonerating Berbice from due examination because of the absence of a decentralisation programme.
For the record, the federation, under David Patterson, has done some work; the National Division 1 Club Championships, which is still incomplete with Ravens to play Pacesetters in the final yet to happen, returned; Tom Newell held a clinic for Coaches and Guyana is expected to participate at the Caribbean Championships in the Bahamas later this month.
That is evidence of some amount of vision at the top, but if the statement that the federation is as strong as its sub-associations is meant to infer that the sub-associations are the real foundation of the federation, then it is only a matter of time before the building of such momentum collapses. It will become inevitable since the sub-associations have not been active.
In Linden, the unplayable surface at the Mackenzie Sports Club (MSC) Basketball Court after an extensive rehabilitation process, have affected the actual game in the community.
The incumbent LABA Executive knew of those issues, which were well documented, before they took office. It cannot, therefore, continue to use the absence of the court as an excuse.
Surely, the MSC is the town’s Mecca of basketball, but in its absence, the LABA could have ran alternative programmes aimed at increasing its officials pool, garnering support from the schools, creating a long-term development plan and implementing theoretical structures that would give it a firm foundation whenever the basketball court returns to normalcy.
But instead, LABA President, Eon Murray and his Executive seem to be bogged down with the bureaucracy of not having the MSC Court at its disposal. I know Murray personally, and I know that his intentions of holding the office are good, but he seriously needs to move on with overall development of the sport in Linden as he promised when he took office. So far, nothing has been done to hint that the LABA is performing in Linden.
The Guyana Amateur Basketball Federation (GABF) Club Championships proved that basketball is at its lowest in Linden when no Linden team won a game. What is positive is that the basis of the sport, which has always been its future, remains strong in Linden.
The Victory Valley Royals tournament proved that strength three weeks ago and Linden’s Technical Institute reiterated the fact with its third national schools’ championship title Sunday night.
In Georgetown, while the individual club structures remain strong, the schools showing at Youth Basketball Guyana’s National Schools’ Basketball Championship was very poor, which does not augur well for the future of basketball in the Garden City.
Trevor Rose had undoubtedly done quite a lot for basketball in Georgetown while he was GABA President.
However, there was a group that believed he was not doing enough. They campaigned against him and won the election on February 13 of this year.
Their platform promised to outlive the legacy of Rose in a brief manifesto, if you want to call it that, which was circulated among clubs.
We are a little under six months since Andy Carto and company has been in office and there has been no known move to implement those points that were documented.
One even wonders if the GABA still exists because little is heard of their programmes. Like the LABA, the GABA has in no way moved to impact on the development of basketball in Guyana.
I wonder if the federation is still as strong as its sub-associations since over the last six months, it has been left up to private groups to keep basketball alive in Linden and in Georgetown. Victory Valley Royals did it in Linden and Youth Basketball Guyana did it in Georgetown.

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