More Hope Than Glory: The Slow Rise and Sudden Collapse of New Zealand Basketball 1982-1991

Next to rugby, basketball in New Zealand was considered a minor sport until the formation of the National League in 1982. The League not only thrived it succeeded beyond expectations. Sponsorship rose from a token $3000 for naming rights in 1982 to $7 million after ten years. And then the bottom fell out. Like a stock market crash, the sport went from being a multi-million dollar event one day to being broke the next. What happened and why is the story told by Tom Hyde, an award winning feature writer and publisher of NZ Basketball Times during those extraordinary times.

Tom Hyde, originally from Jamestown, New York, and a graduate of Kent State University, was 27 years old in 1974 when he joined the basketball club at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, where he studied Sociology. The club won the National Championship that year and soon after he was invited by Television New Zealand to provide commentary for its coverage of an international tournament. He wound up covering New Zealand basketball for more than 30 years, reporting for various newspapers and offering commentary for radio and television. He was the Editor and Publisher of NZ Basketball Times and more recently provided commentary on the NZ Breakers in the Australian National Basketball League for Radio Sport. He is a past president of the NZ Sports Journalists Association and, as Deputy Editor of Metro magazine, was the recipient of a prestigious Qantas Award for feature writing. He is the author of two books on New Zealand golf and is a contributing writer for World magazine. He writes about golf for The Cut.