The way forward for Guyana’s basketball

Mar 24, 2015 Sports

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By Edison Jefford
Guyana’s basketball must now develop to the point where a collection of minds forms the core of a think-tank to accelerate its growth from the recent success. This group of necessary and equally important human resource personnel must be tasked with producing a Strategic Plan that supports the Guyana Amateur Basketball Federation’s (GABF) vision.

This must be the clear path for the sport moving forward from the historic 3-0 International Series win against Bermuda in Guyana two weeks ago. The achievement that our statistician Charwayne Walker contextualised yesterday came despite many anomalies.
For the record, we now know that the last time Guyana achieved such magnificent results from its national senior male basketball team was in 1997 and before then in 1969, making the 2015 result only the third such occurrence in Guyana’s basketball history to-date.
The results two weeks ago came from a fully locally-bred team, which will annul the inclusion of overseas-based players ahead of the Caribbean Basketball Confederation (CBC) Championship in July in Tortola, British Virgin Islands, and perhaps rightly so.
With these ideas in mind, it must be understood that what the GABF achieved over the last month will not be repeated if it does not expand its horizon in the sport. Simply put, the federation took a huge risk and it paid off big, but now it is time to become systematic.
To begin with, corporate Guyana offered no assistance to the federation leading into the Bermuda Series. And even before that series, the National Club Championship was without any major input from the corporate community. Instead of publicly complaining about the lack of sponsorship, the federation persevered with its goals rather than seeking to create what would have definitely be an impending distraction given the Bermuda assignment ahead.
Corporate Guyana’s oversight, to put it mildly, in not supporting a national team heading into an International Series is a serious anomaly, and one that must be corrected if sport is to holistically develop in Guyana. As we continue to advocate, the ‘begging bowl’ phenomenon must end if this country will ever become a serious contender for major sport titles.
The mere fact of a national team heading into international competition, albeit at home, should have been enough to convince sponsors to support them.
But instead of making that a public issue, the GABF soldiered on and managed to get a historic result that broke an 18-year jinx. Nevertheless, the Corporate Community missed an opportunity to brand a historic national basketball team.
The federation’s gamble paid off big. If Guyana had failed last week, it would have added fuel to the fire for the Corporate Community; they would have internalised how bad an investment it was had they supported the team. It is an unfortunate psyche, but it is reality.
Nonetheless, the federation did what it had to do and so put Guyana’s basketball on the map in so much so that there are invitations coming in from other countries for tours. But to contextualise an important point here, the federation will not survive shouldering such big budgets on its own; help must be compulsory.
It is in a similar environment of a collective hand-in-glove approach to funding that the federation must augment its recent success with a comprehensive development programme. This will call for resource personnel, and they are around.
The GABF should start the process to empower a skilled team of individuals to share on how they can sustain this momentum and develop Guyana as a regional brand in basketball.
Some points to consider is first and foremost the fact that a fully locally-based team got Guyana a result it could not get with former NBA, Asian, European and Caribbean stars as was put together last year to compete at the Caribbean Championships.
It means that Guyana must quell its aptitude to import foreign talent because of its perception that those individuals can ‘bring home the bacon’. It has not happened in the past, notwithstanding the heavy cost attached to ensuring these so-called high profiled players are flown to Guyana, fed and housed at proper hotels for their duration here.
The GABF has to examine this prevalence against keeping the recent successful bunch of locally-bred players together, harnessing them through various skills training as per their position, before the 2015 CBC Championships. The federation has to choose the most viable option.
It already has 15 tried and tested players from the Bermuda Series. What was clearly lacking was an authentic ‘big man’ or centre. This should perhaps be the only position that the federation goes overseas to procure since the general conclusion is that none exists in Guyana.
With just the addition of one or two centres, Guyana has an opportunity to keep a bunch of players together for the next three months in a way that will create awesome chemistry and skills cohesion that could improve the country’s performance from fifth last year.
Again, keeping these players, who hail from all parts of Guyana, together will have costs attached to it. Corporate Guyana must step up, take this jump shot or assist Guyana’s basketball on its way to the greatest hoops challenge in the Caribbean, CBC 2015; all-in-all, it is only a collective effort and massive teamwork will ensure that Guyana continues to score big.

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