(Matt Stevens is a basketball fan, freelance writer and BPL Citizen Journalist.)

The NBL have seriously miscalculated the timing of the 2010-11 regular season and playoffs as they prepare now to go head-to-head with the NRL and the AFL. 

After an extensive review at the end of last year, the NBL decided to remain a summer sport on the calendar. Wisely staying away from the might of football and rugby throughout winter, the NBL had an open window to own the summer as cricket and soccer both struggled to draw crowds. But both those sports are finished, while the NBL drags on for still another two more tedious rounds plus the eventual playoffs. 

The competition launched on October 15 last year and the regular season will end almost six months later, on April 2, before the playoffs start. Surely this is far too long to find out the champions of basketball for a nine-team competition. 

If the league is to remain a summer sport and avoid the AFL and NRL codes, why don't they try to schedule a February finals series before the crowds turn their attention to their much-loved football codes? 

It won't be until round five of the AFL season this year that the NBL begins its long-awaited grand final series. 

A completed regular season in sport is supposed to provide a whirlwind of emotions for supporters: ups and downs, surprises and, most of all, the notion of hope that a supporter's team can perform well enough to reach the final stages of the competition. 

After 23 rounds of NBL basketball, the ladder has New Zealand on top, followed in order by Townsville, Perth and Cairns with Wollongong knocking on the finals door in fifth place. The top five teams after 23 rounds have remained the same top five teams since round five, which was completed in mid-November last year. 

The Gold Coast Blaze has been the only genuine threat to those five teams fighting for that finals berth, but the Blaze's effort was effectively over when the league scheduled them an unforgivable and inexcusable 16-day break between games, demolishing any momentum they may have had. 

Having been launched more than five months ago, and with only nine teams competing for the championship, the season has been excessively dragged out. 

The NBA, the elite basketball league in the world, has 30 teams in its league and they play 82 regular-season games. The NBA season started on October 26, 2010 and will run through until the April 13, 2011. 

Each NBL team plays 28 regular season games while, over the same period, NBA teams amass 82 games. 

Wow! For a league that seems to be intent on doing their best to stay away from the NBA style of doing things, by replacing the jump-ball situation with a wooden arrow that demands who gets the ball and reducing basketball action to 10 minutes from 12-minute quarters, they want to replicate the length of the NBA season despite having 21 fewer teams. 

The NBL season must become shorter, and it must grab the Australian and New Zealand sport fans' attention while it can during the summer. A shorter season creates momentum and keep teams in the media spotlight. 

The playoffs should be played in February and called maybe the ‘Feb Final Four'. This would entail a month of finals intensity basketball with the champions crowned at the end of it - before football's juggernaut codes enter the fray. 

The league has made a number of positive steps this year, but this issue is one of many things that need to be addressed if the elite competition in this country is to demand the respect and attention it craves.