Quote:
Originally Posted by MonctonRad
You guys are slow off the mark. There's been an NBL (Canada) thread in the Atlantic Canada section for the last four years. 
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=190591
In any event, a reborn Halifax franchise is coming into the league this year (the Hurricanes) and it is backed by a number of business people in the city, so it should be stable. There is also a new franchise in Niagara Falls this year, and Sydney NS will likely be joining the league next year. |
Well in typical central Canadian fashion, things aren't relevant unless they're relevant in Toronto (perhaps Montreal) first. They assume that basketball is relevant out on the east coast due the Toronto Raptors (and Vince Carter).
The NBL may be bush league but saying that basketball was a fringe sport nationally before Toronto got hooked on the sport is a massive inaccuracy. Halifax is a city that got 11,000 to watch Acadia University play Saint Mary's in 1978. Things have dropped off in NS a little the last 10-15 years, but basketball has long been a mainstream sport there.
I'm giving my age away, but when I grew up in Halifax in the 80s every kid wanted to play either football for SMU or make it onto one of the 5 university squads in Nova Scotia. Hockey was a big sport there too, but I never heard my class mates talk hockey. It was always about basketball (or football). Sidney Crosby changed the conversation considerably.
Btw, it's great to hear that pro basketball is returning to Sydney, NS. They're going to have a hard time luring fans away from the Cape Breton Capers basketball team though. They have a very strong following. I remember attending the Final 8 in Ottawa and they had 3 bus loads of fans that drove up for it. They almost drowned out the Ottawa fans in their own city. The announcer seemed shocked (but pleasantly so) by the level of support for NS teams at that event. It wasn't any shock to me.