DANIEL EADE has been through the fixture for the upcoming NBL season and is less than impressed by what he sees.

The National Basketball League unveiled the 2010/11 regular season fixture last week, killing-off Wednesday night basketball while in the process extending the competition to an unnecessary 25 weeks and setting itself up for a clash with the commencement of the 2011 AFL and NRL seasons.

The season will tip-off on October 15 with the return of the Sydney Kings, who will venture down for an opening round bout with the Melbourne Tigers.

It is hard to fathom why the NBL would not schedule this blockbuster in Sydney, and open things with a bang for the re-born Kings who will instead clash with the New Zealand Breakers in their first home game the following night.

The Melbourne/Sydney rivalry would be the perfect stage for basketball in Sydney to be resuscitated on, and fans would be able to identify in an instant with their new heroes and long time arch-enemies.

Question marks surround the Kings opening to the season, who after missing the previous two years should have been heavily involved in the first few rounds in an attempt to build momentum, but instead the Kings will follow up round one with a bye in round two and not return for a home game until round five.

How the NBL can keep the Kings away from home for 28 days inside the first five weeks of the season is astounding, especially considering that they are one of the biggest power markets in the league and it is required that they be successful off the court for the league to be seen as moving in the right direction.

During the extended season, 20 times in 25 weeks there will be five games or less. For a league trying to get into the spotlight, one would be led to believe that the more basketball the better, but the NBL have turned off Wednesday night where there will now only be three mid-week games all season.

Each team will still play 28 games in 2010/11, but instead of a 21 week season the NBL has added four weeks onto the calendar, spacing games further and further apart, a huge risk for a league that is already struggling to keep fans interested.

Every team should be playing multiple games each week whenever possible. The players are professional athletes, who want to play, not train five times a week for one 40-minute game.

For some unknown reason, the season closes on back-to-back rounds of three and four games heading into the playoffs. Isn't this the time when you want to be building up to the post-season with as many do-or-die games as possible? The Wollongong Hawks don't even play in the final round! And the Perth Wildcats don't play in the final two-rounds! What a joke!

Melbourne will also play five Sunday games. Since the Tigers moved to the Cage, I think they may have hosted one Sunday evening game a season, now there is five. The avalanche of Sunday games for the Tigers means they will now only play seven home-games on a Saturday night, the most popular night for people to attend games. (And Adelaide have two Saturday night games at home all season. That's got to hurt.) Plus two on Friday night, a night the Tigers have long been against playing on due to the high number of fans involved in representative basketball around Victoria.

Larry Sengstock, CEO of Basketball Australia, said: "Our focus this year is very much on having games on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. That's great for families and is right in line with the feedback we have been receiving from fans."

The feedback you have been receiving from fans? What fans? Was this a questionnaire? Did the NBL send out surveys? I never got one.

With the extended season, how will this affect the SEABL/ABA and state leagues around the country, and the NBL players that play in the lower divisions in the off-season? Will these leagues now have to delay their seasons? Will NBL players who drop down into the lower leagues lose money by not being able to commit to their other teams for a whole season, or even lose their jobs because they may miss the start of the season?

Despite only having nine teams in the competition, the NBL regular season will now last longer than the AFL season. The NBL will play 126 games over a season that will last for 170 days.

I don't think I could imagine a worse fixture for the upcoming season.

NBL Fixture 2010/11 - FAIL