By Ian Ransom
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Basketball has long been a benchwarmer in Australia where football and rugby league battle for market supremacy but the Tasmania JackJumpers’ stunning rise into the playoffs has stolen the spotlight from the major sports.
Having barely signed a player a year ago, the expansion team stormed into the National Basketball League (NBL) ‘Grand Final’ series with a stunning Game Three knockout of defending champions Melbourne United on Monday.
The Sydney Kings await in the best-of-five series starting on Friday at their home Super Dome but the three-times champions can count on little support outside the city.
The rest of Australia has jumped on the JackJumpers bandwagon, gunning for the ‘Tassie’ underdogs to complete the fairytale.
“All of Australia is going to be backing Tassie outside of Sydney,” said former Australia point guard Shane Heal, an NBL veteran-turned-TV pundit.
“It’s a Cinderella story, no doubt about that.”
Detached from the mainland and home to barely half a million people, Australia’s smallest state has produced a slew of sporting champions, including Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus and former test cricket captain Ricky Ponting.
Much of the talent ends up at mainland sports teams, however, with the dominant Australian Rules football and rugby league competitions having long overlooked the state.
The JackJumpers have given local basketballers a reason to stay home for the first time since the Hobart Devils were cut from the NBL in the mid-1990s due to financial pressures.
PAROCHIAL SUPPORT
Building a team through the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic had its challenges, but any doubts about the JackJumpers’ viability have been crushed by a huge wave of support.
While the Australian Football League (AFL) and National Rugby League have struggled to return crowds to pre-pandemic levels, the JackJumpers have sold out every game at their home venues in the capital Hobart and northern city of Launceston.
CEO Simon Brookhouse apologised on Thursday to members unable to score a ticket for the Grand Final’s sold-out Game Two at Hobart’s Derwent Entertainment Centre on Sunday.
“They’re very parochial supporting the state,” Brookhouse told Reuters from Hobart.
“Even before we really had a team, we had 3,000 people sign up to be foundation members.”
The JackJumpers are named after a venomous species of ant found mostly in Tasmania which can jump long distances and prove fatal for allergic humans.
The name drew some scorn on the mainland at first but no one is laughing now.
With a roster lacking stars but full of heart, the JackJumpers turned around a 2-6 losing start to sneak into the playoffs.
“The roster included players that other clubs didn’t consider signing and had given up on,” team owner Larry Kestelman, also the NBL Owner and Executive Chairman, told Reuters.
“The group has performed amazingly well to prove everyone wrong and show a strong culture and belief is just as important as talent.”
The JackJumpers’ success has raised the attention of the AFL, which has spent a fortune on expansion clubs to gain footholds in richer states.
While mainland-based AFL teams have long crossed Bass Strait to play matches in Tasmania and cash in on the love of Australian Rules, the competition has balked at setting up a purely Tasmanian outfit.
Brookhouse said he had been in conversations with the AFL about the JackJumpers’ experience and would be happy for his team to share fan affections with a football side some day.
“If we’ve shown nothing else, it’s that the Tasmanian public really do get behind their own. So I think it would be very successful,” he said.
(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
