“Basketball as a career, in Singapore, is still in its infancy.” – a reader’s perspective

Contributed by reader Kelvin Poh

As it has become my routine, I was reading the various articles and comment threads on Red Hoops this morning.

In one of the Red Hoops threads from the third game of the Slinger-Satria Muda semi-final series, there was a comment from "Andrew" that Kyle Jeffers cannot win a championship if he continues to play with the weak Singapore locals.

A follow on remark from "mart" acknowledged that Hong Weijian played a good Game 3, and that this was a positive sign for the Slingers, and then wondered what happened to Wong Wei Long, whom he feels disappeared as the season progressed.

This being a topic close to my heart, I could not help but jump in.

The Singapore local basketball scene has many issues to overcome. Being involved in the scene in one capacity or another for over the past 20 years, I have enough opinions to write a book but I’ll just rattle off a few comments pertinent to the issue of “weak” local players.

Firstly, Singapore society, up to the last few years, has not been conducive for sports excellence. Only a very select few have been successful in making a career from sports. Even if sporting excellence is attained, an even smaller group out of these elite athletes manages to reap financial success from sports.

Suffice to say, most parents would rather see their children focus on academic pursuit, and beyond their school years, channel their energy and talents into the corporate world, or in the civil service, rather than excel on the sporting field.

Things have changed, and now, as a society we are working on this. Sports as a career, is becoming more viable, with successful individuals enjoying good income and higher standards of living for themselves and their families.

Basketball, however, is still lagging behind other sports, in this aspect. Outside of a small group of full-time coaches, Basketball as a career, in Singapore, is still in its infancy.

We have many players who stop playing the game at a high level after they leave school. Even the most passionate, who continue to play competitively, cannot sustain the required commitment levels, once they start working. Inevitably, they drop out. So, the high performance talent pool for seniors is small.

Our boys do not have enough opportunity to play at a higher level. Before the ASEAN Basketball League (ABL), they only played local competitions. The Australian National Basketball League (NBL) did not count. The two or three Singapore boys selected had very limited playing minutes. The main benefit was the exposure from the coaching and the professional setup for training and conditioning.

The local Singapore clubs mostly do not groom talent, but poach and loan from each other to play in tournaments. This means that at the various tournaments, the same small pool of better players at their peak, play each other, and collectively "bully" the teams fielding lower-level players, or aging high performance players. There is no improvement if you are not playing against higher level players on a consistent basis.

Probably the only club with a decent training regime and program is Home United. Then again, many have felt that their ability to sustain such a program is due to the fact that they are the team sustained by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in Singapore, that you can draw a salary for your day job and still get credited for time spent on basketball.

There has been a limited opportunity for these high-performance players to play regional opponents. Depending on the bosses associated with the local clubs who are sponsoring the teams, there is some ad-hoc participation in competitions in the region.

From my recollection, the Singapore teams have not had any noteworthy performances at these competitions. This is probably because the entire selection, training, competing process is so haphazard.

Incidentally, there is almost zero media coverage on such events and no vehicle for following the teams' progress in our English press.

Off and on, the most organized senior team is probably our National team. The clubs feed the national team, and players gather for centralized training, with varying intensity levels depending on the next project they are preparing for.

However, the Basketball Association of Singapore (BAS) has not sent the National team to the last few South East Asian (SEA) Games. This has been a source of much frustration for me. The SEA Games is the lowest level regional competition for our basketballers. It is also probably the least expensive competition to participate in, in terms or travel and management costs. If we do not send our National team to this competition, why bother having a National team at all?

So thanks to the gods and higher powers that we now have the Slingers. If you are talented enough, you can play basketball and get paid doing it. This means that if you are good enough, and if you put in the effort, you can now play high-level ball for more years, you can learn from professional and well-run organizations about skill development, tactics, and conditioning. Then when you are through playing, maybe you can get a basketball-related career extension in technical operations or coaching.

That's why I make it a point to buy my own ticket, despite opportunities to get complimentary ones and be in the various corporate boxes. I want the franchise to be successful and profitable so that they will stay with us for a long time, and help us build our platform for our local talent.

My gratitude also to the franchise and to coach Frank Arsego for not filling up their full quota of imports, thereby allowing a local to be the 5th man, and forcing the locals to play a bigger role off the bench.

We have rotated several Singaporeans in this starting spot over the season. Hong WeiJian, Desmond Oh, Michael Wong have all been given opportunities and probably Weijian has blossomed the most.

Wong Wei Long had some good games, when he surprised opponents with his shooting and he played good perimeter pressure defense. But he is still young, and he is not yet matured and experienced enough to hold down the point guard job. Arguably, it is easier to be young and inexperienced and energetic at the shooting guard spot.

Then we have the other youngsters like Steven Khoo, Lim Wai Sian and Prasad Sadasivan who are not really skillful enough and definitely not big enough at this level to be effective as forwards (Prasad is listed as a guard).

I am sure that they train hard, and the exposure and training is helping them, but I do not see them contributing significantly and consistently at this level. That's why I was very happy for Steven Khoo that he had his moment of glory when he was called to fill in for the starters in the key minutes of one of the regular season games, and he made some big plays (against the Patriots).

Our young ball players have better opportunities today than any of their predecessors in years past. There will be more players graduating from the school scene, including a promising 15-year-old, Delvin Goh, who is already over 1.9m and is being used as a centre for his school, Unity Secondary, but plays naturally like a power forward. Delvin is already being groomed in the national squad.

I hope the Slingers stay successful and stay with us long enough, so that these green shoots bear fruit. It wouldn't hurt too if our national sports association did some serious self-evaluation as to what their long-term purpose and 5-year plan is.

As my old school motto preaches, there is hope for a better future.

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