National Basketball League

Damon, Chad always sings your praises.

If we said to Damon Larry, "Pick your top four," before a, a ball's been bounced, who are the top four sides in the NBL you'd choose?

Top four.

I'll start with four.

Uh, the third spot, I'm gonna go to Perth Wildcats.

The Perth Wildcats are bringing back their nucleus.

They're still missing a point guard, but they're bringing back first team All-NBL Christian Doolittle, J- J- Jolo Latuill.

They, they're still loaded.

And that will be hit number two, given up by Matlack.

The other was also an NBL base hit, and that was by McIver.

And he'll be looking right now at Lyman Bostock.

Hargrove made a tremendous play on him to retire him to close out the first inning.

Today's guest is former Sydney Kings and Canberra Cannons import Mario Donaldson.

Mario first came to Australia in 1994, joining the Kings alongside fellow import Leon Trimingham, and together they established themselves as one of the most iconic import duos in NBL history.

He averaged more than 22 points a game during that year in Sydney, but he was also an outstanding three-point shooter.

In fact, after all these years, Mario still sits seventh all-time in NBL three-point percentage for those players who've put up more than 100 shots beyond the arc.

After leaving Sydney, he returned to the NBL three years later, pairing with Robert Rose at the Canberra Cannons, and across his two seasons, Mario averaged more than 20 points a game.

Today, we're going to talk about his time in college to playing alongside Leon and Rob, and plenty of stories from the NBL in the 90s.

Super Mario, Mario Donaldson, thanks for joining us on the show.

hey good good afternoon to everybody good to see well here it's early early morning so it's about 6 30 something like that but uh great to hear that australian accent and uh hello to everyone out there

Damon Larry's gonna ...

We're a week away from the NBL, uh, tipping off for what promised to be an unbelievably competitive season.

Blitz is done and dusted.

We'll talk to the great D. Larry about who he likes and why on the other side of this.

Uh, obviously comes out of, you know, the Tar Heels program.

A first round, 15th pick overall NBA draftee only six years ago.

What the hell is he doing in the NBL at the age of 26?

26?And when I meet him, I'm gonna ask him that very question, "What the hell are you doing over here?" Um, but th- th- it just goes to show you how valued the NBL is that a guy like Cole Anthony would rather be here than, I don't know, Lithuania, Hun- Hungary, I don't know.

The Insight NBL Show with your hosts Metrics and Hammer.

Welcome back to the Baseline J- Jumper Podcast.

Sorry, it caught me with food.

Look, let me take it from here while you inhale your chocolate-covered peanuts.

Cheapies are our ticket to cash.

Every year we have an influx of young budding stars back from college or wherever, coming up through the NBL1, trying to make a name for themselves, and most of these will start anywhere from 69,000.

Some of them will not hit the court.

Some, though, over the years, have absolutely doubled, tripled, quadrupled in price and these have been our ticket to affording the premium players later on in the season.

[upbeat music] Welcome everybody to another edition of the "Cut to the Jase" podcast.

We're in Bendigo, or I'm in-- still in Bendigo, but we've just come off a lot of basketball personalities being in Bendigo, of course, for the NBL Blitz.

But we're here for another podcast, obviously waiting a couple weeks after our return, but it's episode 41, just to keep track of that for Daz every week.

But of course, I'm Braden Hazlehurst, website editor of basketball.com.au, and joined by the main man himself, Jason Cadit.

Jase, uh, it was a, it was a good weekend with the Blitz, uh, here in Bendigo, mate.

Um, did you enjoy sorta catching the sorta first glimpse of these NBL teams ahead of the season?

Yeah, it was good.

I'm not a big, uh, preseason guy.

Kogan.com. Clicking awesome.

The Breakers are in action again tonight as they build up towards the start of the Australian Basketball League season.

They take on Melbourne United in their final pre-season game after a pretty good pre-season to date.

A couple of wins and an early loss to the Sydney Kings.

Oh,

I go to the – is it NBL? Basketball?

Yep, NBL.

Yep.

I go for Melbourne United.