Basketball is arguably the second-most popular sport in the world. But did you know that there is a top-level professional team playing right here on these shores? That’s right – the Singapore Slingers of Australia’s National Basketball League (NBL) are in our own backyard. Slingers managing director Bob Turner is determined to increase the level of awareness as the team tips off its second season in the NBL on 19 September at Singapore Indoor Stadium, with a tough match against last year’s beaten finalists, the Melbourne Tigers. 

‘The product is very good,’ Turner says. ‘It’s an entertainment package as much as it is a sport. We put on an NBA-style show, with cheerleaders, the JumboTron [a TV screen for replays and stats], a mascot, music, dancing and singing. Plus the basketball.’ 

And in case he missed anything, Turner adds: ‘It’s one of the few sports where a businessman can bring his wife and kids, with 47 per cent of the crowd female. It’s safe, wholesome and fun.’ 

The Slingers will play 15 home games this season, with the schedule split between Sundays (tip-off 5pm) and Wednesdays (7:30pm). Single ticket options range from lucrative, $50 courtside seats, to general admission tickets, which cost just $6, but limit fans to the upper echelons of the stadium. There are also 35 corporate boxes, where businesses can entertain clients and employees with courtside seats and hospitality. 

Turner points out that the Slingers are not just a transplanted Australian team. At least two members (guard Koh Meng Koon and forward Pathman Matialakan) of the playing squad of 12 are Singaporeans, and Neo Beng Siang is the first assistant to head coach Gordon McLeod. So there are some local players for fans to follow and aspire to. And of course the cheerleaders, the sexy Slingers Girls, are all Singaporean. 

Turner, an American who was elected to the NBL Hall of Fame in 2000 for his coaching achievements, is confident of a successful season. The Slingers struggled to get attention last year from the paying public and the local media despite the team’s sterling performances, which saw it make the NBL play-offs in its first season – an achievement which Turner calls ‘fantastic’. 

‘We need crowds of 3,000 to break even,’ Turner says. Last season the Slingers drew an average crowd of just 1,700 per game, which was below expectation given basketball’s popularity here among local and expat communities. 

Turner admits the rushed circumstances behind the team’s arrival in Singapore were partly to blame. They were only granted approval to play in late March and, with the season looming in September, everything had to be done from scratch, and quickly. Even the seemingly simple task of finding suitable practice facilities caused problems. 

‘We trained at Basketball Singapore’s HQ, which is not air-conditioned, so 45 minutes into practice, there was water coming out of the players’ shoes,’ Turner says. ‘It just made it so difficult, we had to call practice early all the time.’ 

Their late entry into the NBL draw meant there was no pattern to the schedule last year, and indeed seven of the team’s 15 home games were played in the first five weeks of the season, before the team had been properly marketed to the Singapore public. And there were no weekend games. 

The Slingers are better prepared for their second season, but they still need local support. While football is undoubtedly the most followed sport in Singapore, the Slingers are hoping to tap into basketball’s grass-roots popularity here. It is one of the biggest participatory sports in local schools, and there are hoops and courts at many community sports centres. Yet Turner says Singaporeans made up only 37 per cent of the fans that came to games last season. ‘Ideally, we’d like that number to rise to 60 per cent,’ he says.
 
If a good product is offered, locals have shown they will turn up in large numbers: witness the full houses for football at the last two Tiger and ASEAN Cup finals and the 45,000 in attendance for the recent Singapore-Australia game. ‘We have an expat community here that is starved for [spectator] sports, and we have a local community that perhaps doesn’t notice that they are starved,’ says Turner. 

The Slingers offer not only a regular diet of top-class sport to watch, but they can also provide a national identity. And a big advantage over football’s S-League is that the Slingers are the only team in town. As for the much-loved English Premier League, Singaporean football fans can’t exactly pop into an EPL match. So while there are no Michael Jordans on offer, the Slingers has its own stable of nimble seven-foot giants, and all the potential in the world to be the next big thing in local sports. 

The Singapore Slingers play the Melbourne Tigers on 19 Sep.