Remember When: The Sydney Spirit

The landscape of the NBL has changed in recent years. The competition is at a level of growth and consistency that has never been seen before.

Not only are the ten existing clubs performing well both on and off the floor, but measured and rapid expansion has been cited ahead of upcoming seasons.

This was not always the case though.

Damian Martin may be remembered as a legend of the Perth Wildcats. Six NBL titles, six Best Defensive Player awards and a Larry Sengstock Medal will do that, but he was a member of the Sydney Spirit when one of the NBL’s proudest clubs began to collapse around him.

The Spirit had been rebranded from the West Sydney Razorbacks ahead of the 2008-2009 season. In its decade as the Razorbacks the club had reached two Grand Finals and seen genuine NBL legends including Derek Rucker, John Rillie, Sam Mackinnon, Simon Dwight and Bruce Bolden pull on the uniform.

Current Perth Wildcats head coach John Rillie was named to the All-NBL First Team playing for the Razorbacks in 2004.

The rebranding to the Spirit took place after the Sydney Kings’ exit from the NBL and Martin reflected on the season of the Spirit’s demise.

“I understand the mindset the owner had in rebranding the team to encompass all of Sydney and make it a one city team, but we were far from that going into that first season,” Martin told NBL Media.

“The West Sydney Razorbacks were a brand of their own and had a good following, now we may not have had thousands of people attend games, but the team was well known. Starting from scratch as the Sydney Spirit, I remember thinking nobody in any conversation I had had heard of this team and kept asking if we were like the Kings.

“At that stage we were a young team having fun playing a game we loved. We weren’t getting the wins we wanted, but we still had a professional approach. I learned a lot from the move from the Spirit to the Perth Wildcats but at that stage I was just loving life.

“Then I got that dreaded email a week before Christmas in 2008 of the owner handing the licence back to the league and saying he wasn’t going to pay us anymore.

“I want to say our big season opening event was at a club in Penrith and only about 20 people showed up. We had plenty of fun and I’ve still got mates that stemmed from that year together – I don’t want to take that away from the experience, but in hindsight it probably makes sense why it didn’t survive financially.”

After they finished the season in tenth place with a 10-20 record in their final season as the Razorbacks, the Spirit’s record up until Christmas was more than respectable.

They sat with a 9-10 record across their first 19 games of the season and went on a four-game winning run in late November. Then, the wheels fell off.

Following the announcement of the withdrawing of funding, star local duo Liam Rush and Julian Khazzouh and import Derrick Low left the side to pursue new contracts, and the team finished the season with an 11-19 record.

After leaving the Spirit Julian Khazzouh returned to the NBL in 2010 and earned two All-NBL First Team nominations with the Sydney Kings.

“I remember the meeting,” Martin said. “We sat around in a circle together. I was young and didn’t have many overheads. I was renting an apartment and had just come back from college, whereas we had teammates who were married, kids, mortgages, school fees.

“I can only imagine the stress the guys who did have all of those commitments must have been feeling, because what you knew as you were going to wake up one morning completely changed within a few hours and that was going to impact not just you as an individual, but your whole family.

“We were freaking out thinking what it meant for our careers and our contracts we thought would be honoured. Basketball Australia and the NBL did all they could, but at the end of the day one through 12 of us that stayed to play the season divided the gate takings.

“It wasn’t huge attendance, so you’d look up into the stands and say ‘hi mum and dad, thanks for your $20. We’re going to divide that by 15 of us’, but it meant at the end of the year we weren’t under contract so we went our separate ways.

“I played with a broken wrist the whole season. I think a few games into it I broke my arm, and it wasn’t until the end of the year they realised I’d been playing with a broken arm. I had the cast put on and missed some Boomers travel at the end of the year, but went into the Wildcats fit and healthy.

“You have to go through player by player how much that impacted them. For me it turns out it worked out well because I moved onto the Wildcats, and that’s where I realised professional means you get paid to do it, elite means all the one percenters are covered form the players to the front office.”

Martin went on to win six titles with the Perth Wildcats and become one of the most influential local players of his generation.

With the stable and strong position the NBL has taken within the Australian sporting landscape it feels like occurrences like the Spirit folding could have only happened a lifetime ago, but it was barely 15 years ago.

Current Melbourne United forward Brad Newley had just departed the NBL to pursue a career in Europe, and recently departed Adelaide legend Daniel Johnson was in the midst of his rookie campaign with the Melbourne Tigers.

This was not a lifetime ago, nor even a generation ago.

Martin believes with the way the competition is placed now though, it’s unlikely something of that ilk could happen again.

“It's become such a powerhouse as a league,” he said. “There would definitely be some clubs in a better financial position than others, but if I look around at the current ownership structure because a lot of clubs are independently owned or owned by smaller consortiums, with what I know currently I feel very comfortable with where club-by-club is at.

“For the 13 years I was in the NBL I want to say for ten years there was a solid restricted salary cap at $1 million, and now there are clubs paying over $2 million. That only happens when there’s marketing behind the games, there are bums on seats and eyes on the screen, and that started from the top.

“Where the NBL is at is brilliant and they’ve protected themselves with how the structure of buying a club pays out. If the wrong person was to come in and buy a team you can never guarantee that a team or players wouldn’t go through some stress, but I think that network is there now where we won’t see what happened with the Sydney Spirit.”

The NBL’s past two expansion clubs – Tasmania and South East Melbourne – has seen the NBL return under a new name into regions they previously operated in. In the case of those two clubs, the Devils and the Magic have been replaced by the JackJumpers and the Phoenix.

Whether clubs like the Razorbacks ever come back into the competition remains to be seen, but Martin says he would love for any number of now defunct sides to be back in the NBL.

“I’d love nothing more than to see the West Sydney Razorbacks come back,” he said.

Damian Martin defends Corey Williams of the Townsville Crocodiles.

“Funnily enough through radio I spoke with the guy who owns the Newcastle Falcons licence. That was the team I grew up wanting to play for, they were only an hour-and-a-half from Gloucester, we’d get to games and it was Grant Kreuger, Benny Melmeth, guys I grew up idolising. I haven’t given up hope on seeing the Newcastle Falcons back.

“I haven’t given up on seeing the Newcastle Falcons back, I’d love to see Townsville back – that used to be one of my favourite road trips – I’m married to Brittany Morgan who’s Brad Newley’s cousin and Brad’s like a little brother to me so the history he had up there and Rob Rose, John Rillie, Corey (Williams), there are so many fun memories there.

“There’s a lot of nostalgia when I talk about some of the clubs that have folded and the optimist in me thinks we see a chance some of them might return.”