MELBOURNE (Paulo Kennedy's View from Downunder) - This week it got real. A window into the challenges soon to be faced by the Australian Opals, and women's basketball in general, opened up for all to see.

The bad news is the threat is more imminent than first thought. The good news is that Basketball Australia (BA) has at least taken the first steps towards confronting it.

As I wrote last month, I and many others believed the rise of AFLW - the new women's league in Australian rules football - would pose a threat to basketball in the medium-to-long term, but two things have happened in the past fortnight to dismiss that idea.

Some will point to that as a star basketballer, who has already achieved much of what there is to achieve, playing a hobby season late in her career, rather than a hoops player jumping ship to footy. There is also the fact she will play for Dallas in the WNBA this current season.

For those reasons, it is what happened to a lot less fanfare two weeks ago that should actually put a shiver up our basketball authorities' collective spines.

It was at my old stomping ground, Frankston Park, that Monique Conti blitzed for the Calder Cannons in the TAC Cup U18 girls competition, described in the local media as "electric" as she claimed best on ground honours.

That same newspaper report described her as the "WNBL rookie of the year", which is certainly true, but Conti is much more than that.

When Australia claimed gold at the FIBA U17 Women's World Championship 2016, the pint-sized point guard was selected in the tournament's All-Star Five after leading the Sapphires' scoring in the medal round.

This is a star young athlete who, given the Opals' lack of guard depth, could be representing her country at senior level quite soon. However, given her form for the Cannons, she is highly likely to be taken in the AFLW draft and rewarded with a relatively healthy contract.

More importantly, if someone like Conti is spending five months per year dedicated to footy then she will not develop to the level of professional basketballers from other countries who are full-time, and that means the Opals suffer.

"Have we dropped the ball? Absolutely," new Basketball Australia chair Ned Coten said candidly when asked about the WNBL's slipping status as other sports put more emphasis on female sport.

Coten is adamant though that much is happening behind the scenes to make sure women's basketball in Australia is not left behind in the race to be an attractive career choice for our best female athletes.

One significant step, as reported by the Herald Sun, is the progress towards instituting a new pay deal for WNBL players - such as Conti - which includes a minimum wage, pregnancy pay, a view to improve childcare access and other measures like scheduling that make the league more friendly to the athletes Basketball Australia wants competing in it.

"Jacob Holmes has set up the Australian Basketballers Association and we've worked closely with him to make sure that we're providing the right environment from an employment perspective that supports the different needs of women and particularly women with children," Coten said.

"We think that within the bounds of our commercial ability we're providing all the support that we can and clearly we need to."

The title of this column - Minimum progress - shouldn't be confused with the phrase minimal progress, because a base wage of at least $7500, plus other conditions, ensures a talented multi-sport athlete knows basketball is a genuine option, not a two-bit player compared to other sports.

Coten said there isn't a "quick fix", given the huge amount of money from men's footy, soccer and cricket are allowing other sports to artificially inflate pay for their female athletes, a luxury basketball doesn't have.

However, BA must implement a forward-thinking plan because the odds are other sports will keep evolving what their women’s leagues can offer. For me there are a number of crucial planks:
- Tapping into government and private-sector funds by running a comprehensive and coordinated community program across all WNBL clubs;
- Better utilising our best female basketballers as community role models through such a program and supplementing their pay through such a program;
- Increasing the percentage of Australia’s population that has direct contact with a WNBL team and our Opals players;
- Returning the WNBL to television;
- More strongly linking the WNBL into our elite junior talent pathway to more efficiently use coaching resources and high-performance funding;
- Recruiting our best junior national team talent onto WNBL rosters at a younger age to increase their overall earnings and give them access to quality coaching close to their home;
- Lowering the cost of operating a WNBL team to create greater certainty for players and encouragement to prospective owners/associations.

Of course, all of these things are linked. I believe the important first step is to get public and private partners on board with the idea of Australia's female basketball players being active role models and the WNBL being directly linked with the drive for an Opals medal at future Olympic Games and FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cups.

Those two aspects will give outsiders context to the competition, and give athletes a clearer picture of where they will sit within the Australian sporting landscape as a professional basketballer.

It also creates a platform for investors and/or large associations to enter the competition, increasing the community reach of women's basketball, increasing the potential television audience and creating new opportunities for our best young talent.

For me that must be a priority for BA. There are currently less than a third the number of opportunities in the WNBL as the AFLW, who are also actively looking to expand. With Phillips and Conti showing how easily a high-level basketball can adapt to Aussie rules, those opportunities will be a strong lure.

When there are WNBL clubs in all key centres, it is easier for our current stars to influence our emerging ones, easier to ingrain teenage talent in our elite programs and hence harder for other sports to pry them away. That is crucial for the Opals' future success.

I'll leave the last word to Coten, who says "opportunities to play are critical" and BA must do "a better job of promoting our stars" to counter the emergence of public figures in other women's sports.

"We're certainly work extremely hard on television and I think we're certainly working more collaboratively with our WNBL clubs than we have in the past," he said.

"It comes down to us doing a better job of talking about all the real opportunities there are with basketball. We’ve done a really shitty job of doing that over a long period of time."

Paulo Kennedy

FIBA

FIBA's columnists write on a wide range of topics relating to basketball that are of interest to them. The opinions they express are their own and in no way reflect those of FIBA.

FIBA takes no responsibility and gives no guarantees, warranties or representations, implied or otherwise, for the content or accuracy of the content and opinion expressed in the above article.