British basketball will be more like the NBA next season following the major reorganisation of the Budweiser League into two conferences, North and South, which will help Scotland's only pro team, Edinburgh Rocks.
In an another development, the Uniball Trophy, basketball's league cup event, will include teams from outwith the league, including the champions of Wales, England's first division and, possibly, Scotland.
That would open the door for Glasgow Sports Division to come in, having won the Scottish League for the first time last season. But whether Glasgow would accept the chance at this stage in their development is another matter.
Club spokesman Willie Cameron made it clear last year, when speculation was rife that Worthing Bears were in talks with city officials about a possible buy-out of their franchise, that the first priority was club development with more teams and a better women's set-up. That has already paid off, with Glasgow women winning the Scottish Cup for the first time at the Kelvin Hall at the end of March.
The new two-conference set-up for the Bud League will mean that each team will play the others in their conference four times and those outwith their conference twice.
At the end of the season there will be inter-conference play-offs to decide the championship.
It will certainly cut down on some of the ludicrous overnight travelling commitments which the Rocks faced in their first season when, having played down south on a Saturday, they had to be back in Edinburgh the following day for a home match.
''I think it sank in when we pointed out that we were having to travel further to get to Edinburgh for some of our home matches than the teams we were due to play in those games,'' said managing director Ian Reid.
Leicester and Derby, hardly in the north of England, are both in the North Conference, which is the bigger by one team, there being 13 teams in the league.
The conferences are:
North - Chester, Derby, Edinburgh, Leicester, Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield.
South - Birmingham, Brighton, Greater London, London Towers, Milton Keynes, Thames Valley.
This weekend the current season's Budweiser League play-offs take place at Wembley with London Towers facing the all-conquering Sheffield Westfield Sharks, then Manchester Giants, the league runners-up, meeting Thames Valley Tigers in the semi-finals today, with the final tomorrow.
Four Scots will be providing supporting action at Wembley, though, somewhat farcically, they may have to miss watching the big final as they have to leave for home on the last train at 6pm.
The four, Laurie Costello, Robert Shanks, Gemma McGregor and Alex Nelson, are all from Portobello High School and won their 14-to-16 age group sections of the Kellogg's NBA2Ball national skills competition.
In qualifying they actually came out top on points scoring for the whole of the UK, the boys amassing an impressive 65 points, nine clear of the next best, and the girls notching up 41.
They will shoot out against Thames Valley Tigers boys and Plymouth Riders girls in front of the tv cameras and an 8000 crowd for the title of national champions.
Scotland's men, meanwhile, keep in training after their encouraging win over Ireland last Saturday as they prepare to meet the touring American side, Juanita College, at Portobello a week on Monday.
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