The plight of basketball in SVG

Fri, Jun 15. 2012

Editor: On Sunday, 3rd June, 2012, I journeyed to the basketball court at New Montrose to watch the 3rd in a best of three finals between Calliaqua United and Playaz.{{more}}

This was not the first game I attended and had been disappointed in various ways about things that I observed, which came to a climax on the above mentioned date.

My first observation related to the times at which scheduled games were started. All the games I attended started about 45 minutes to over 1 hour late. One of the reasons for this was the tardiness of referees. The players and spectators, recognizing this, also turned up about 1 hour after the scheduled times.

My next observation has to do with the lack of discipline during the game. I remember, during one of the few games that I attended, there was an altercation between two players. I sat in the stand and heard obscene language from at least one of the players from each team. At least one of the referees had to have heard them, since they were in the midst of the commotion, trying to avoid any physical confrontation. This disruption caused the game to stop for between 15 minutes and half an hour. When the game resumed, no foul was called, no technical was given and no one was thrown out of the game…just back to business as usual.

I heard also that there were instances where referees were verbally assaulted and threatened by spectators to “referee the game properly”.

The climax of the tournament did not take any other route than the one it was already on. The score was level at 19-19 and there were 9:33 minutes remaining in the 2nd quarter (according to the score board), when it all erupted. The referee called a foul on a player from the Playaz team. The commentator then alerted the spectators that that was the 4th personal foul on the player (a player is allowed 5 fouls after which he/she cannot return to the game). The player started arguing quite boisterously that he could not have had 4 fouls. The game was stopped and the referee went over to the scorers’ table and confirmed that such was the situation. The player continued to vehemently deny this possibility. After realizing that he was getting nowhere, he went back to his team bench and sat. There, according to information reaching my ears, he instructed the other players not to return to the court. It is my belief that this player is the owner, manager and captain of this team…(subject to correction).

The referee instructed the players to return to the court so that the game could resume, only to see some of them packing up their bags and leaving. The referee, left with no other choice, then awarded the game to Calliaqua United.

That was the end of what was shaping up to be a very competitive basketball final.

I played competitive basketball for a few years and stopped after other priorities did not allow me to time to continue doing so.

Sad to say, the events of that night, combined with my other disappointment, have once again dampened my spirit and have me questioning whether or not I want to be involved in basketball again.

Basketball in SVG needs an injection of some sort to be revamped. We need new systems, new players, new referees and new executives who have love and respect for the game. It appears that this love and respect have been lost over the years with those currently involved in the game.

We need to get the game into our schools and communities, so that it can regain the pre-eminence it once had among sports in this country.

I am calling on the authorities and those individuals who may be in a position the help to revive basketball to do so before it becomes a forgotten sport in St Vincent.

For the Love of Basketball