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The men's NBL began in 1979
after popularity for the game of basketball was raised through a
combination of Australian Olympic Games success and an increasing exposure of
USA professional basketball on Australian television.
The NBL has grown from a fledgling competition with games played before just a few hundred people in small gymnasiums to games played before crowds of up to 10,000 in some of the larger stadiums. Between 1979 and 1997, the NBL season was played between April and September, but in 1998 the League changed its season to summer with games taking place between October and April. The womens WNBL started not long after the men's in 1981 and now play in many of the stadiums used for the NBL. That being said, the crowd support for the WNBA has never reached the scale of the men's. Australian women basketballers have been much more successful than the men in supplying basketballers to the US WNBA competition - many of which return for the WNBL season between November and April. |