– GABF boss sits one-on-one with Stabroek Sport
The story of David and Goliath is unquestionably one of the more popular chronicles in the Holy Bible and now newly-elected president of the Guyana Amateur Basketball Fed-eration David Patterson will reenact the event having the herculean task of reviving the game of basketball in Guyana.

Patterson, who once stood as head of the game on the Georgetown Amateur Basketball Association (GABA) before, being vice president of the Godwin McPherson-led Federation, will now sit at the helm of the governing body for the next four years.

He brings with him a wealth of experience in the game since apart from being the head of the GABA for some time; he also was the manager of Guyana’s senior male and female basketball squad (1994 –2000) during their illustrious years competing at the CBC Championships, formally known then as the CARICOM Basketball Championships.

In his earlier years he was an active player on the Eagles basketball club and represented Guyana at the under-19 level.

Patterson’s life outside of basketball is being a family man and also a politician, being a parliamentarian of the opposition party, Alliance for Change (AFC).

The newly-installed GABF president (DP) recently  sat down with Stabroek Sport (SS) to do his first extensive interview since taking the post on February 14, and he rolled out several plans for the game which many pundits believe are in a subliminal state.

Below is the interview which will be published in two parts.
SS: Do you think that the game of basketball is dead in Guyana?
DP: The game of basketball in Guyana is not lost. You know, our players in all fairness to them, still have an incredibly high standard of athleticism, also take for example the players from Linden – they are always fundamentally sound over the years and of course, the Georgetown based  players, they are always more flashy.

But, it’s not the game; it’s how we administer it. I think the sport is in this state because we have dropped the ball as administrators and that is what we need to get back into the game, the right structure. I think once we put back the structure in place we are good to go and also the discipline.

It’s hard to market a game when you have indisciplined persons or people around. I mean we can’t stop period because remember this is sports and a person’s temper could fly at times and while some can control it, some can’t, but we will certainly be looking to make the game of basketball marketable again and help to return us to what we used to be.

Basketball, once it is marketed correctly, or actually I must say that it is one of the easiest marketable games around.  But I’ll remain adamant that it’s the structure, in a sense that people don’t know what they are getting, the clubs don’t know what they are playing for and that is something that we have to resolve.

We will reintroduce the Club Championships, where the Champion Club of Georgetown and so on, would play against each other. Also we are supposed to have an annual ranking so we could know the status of our clubs.

Already, we are planning to have an exchange with clubs in Trinidad and Barbados, which we used to do under the early days of Colonel McPherson’s reign when he was in the Army (Guyana Defence Force), we used to do a home and away with these countries.

When I was at the Caribbean Basketball Con-federation (CBC) I had spoken to both Trinidad and Barbados and Antigua surprisingly is very, very interested in this as well.

SS: If we look at the game in the recent past, it has been failing to attract some of this country’s major sponsors; do you think you and your newly-elected body can do better in this regard?

DP: The federation of the recent past had a few credibility issues in the sense that there were no elections, the last audited statement as you might or might not know was done in 2006 and people are wary because of the value for money and that’s why I think most of corporate Guyana were reluctant to go behind the game.

However, this is what I have done long before I mentioned anything about running for president of the GABF. I met with several key stake holders in corporate Guyana and the indications were pretty good, I mean I don’t want to jump the gun here but I mean the big ones, they all indicated under a revamped federation they would get behind the sport in a massive way.

SS: Mr. Patterson, you speak a lot about changes and what you intend to do and so on, but when can we expect really to see things taking a turn for the better?

DP: Change is not an overnight process, so I don’t want anybody to get this idea that all these things and plans we have will just happen right away. However, we have already started to get some response from some people from the draft proposals that we had sent out.

The first couple of things we are going to do is to address our membership, you know, get all of our sub-associations and other related bodies up to scratch, so we are going to get our house in order.

And after that we would be looking at getting our national team back into competition, because we have, like I said, a touring team coming through in April so we would have to get our boys up and ready by then, get them together and so on.

And that is another thing we have to get back, a status on our players because if you were to ask me, who are our top players or our top clubs, I wouldn’t be able to say because these things are not properly documented and therefore when trials come around, selecting players would become very subjective and we would have to go back to what was happening over the last couple of years.

We resorted to picking two players from every club around the country and so on and this shouldn’t be, I mean we should be able to know who and who are the top players in our country and it would make selection of a team much, much lighter for  the coaches and so on.

I mean in the old days, if Ravens had the top eight players in Guyana, all eight players more than likely would be on that team, and now the top two players from each club would be selected so these little things that we have allowed to creep into the game have put us in this hole I should say.

SS: How does the federation stand financially?

DP: We are in a deficit at the moment. It’s not insurmountable at all, we have some receivables but I really can’t say if they will actually be received but it’s nothing insurmountable.

But if we get these monies owed to us, it would be able to help us in a great way.

But again, it all comes down to getting our structure in order and our house corrected because that would be a catch because they would have to pay affiliation fees and those things and then corporate sponsorship to run off the next tournament in April, you know what I mean and  things like that.

So we have to get our structures right because back in the day, sub-associations were unwilling to pay these affiliation fees because they were concerned about what’s in it for them and where the federation is going and things like that but now that we had our elections and everybody seems very, very willing to help develop the game, we should be moving ahead on this.

SS: The area of youth and development has been ignored for some time now or I should say, the federation has not been doing much in this area – what part of the new plans for the game does this fall or what will you be doing to develop the game from this level?

DP: FIBA has mandated us as a country and as a matter of fact, all of their affiliates to start a mini-basketball programme which we have not done. I don’t think we are the only national federation that has not done so.

The next Caribbean championship is under-15 and very few countries have an under-15 and that’s because we have ignored that age group somewhat and focused more on under–19 tournaments and so on and the reason being it was a decision between the Caribbean countries because most of us say that it’s very hard to get an under–15 squad, or I should say a very competitive under–15 squad together.

So what we have decided, as a CARICOM body we would run our youth programmes from the under-19s where we would showcase people like young Akeem Kanhai and all the youngsters where we would invite the scouts to these games so these players can be spotted for scholarships.

So that was a conscious decision made by the CBC. However, FIBA, the big body said no! They arranged for the basketball development programme for under–15s, so the people who win the under–15 championship this year would go straight onto CENTROBASKE, which I think would be under–16 next year, so basically what they are saying is that the same under-15 team in four years would play under-19, it’s a cycle they (FIBA) have set up.

They have forced all of us in the CBC region now to start investing in the youths and I have said this to the council.

Now, Linden said they have an under–15 programme running and they can put together a strong and competitive team at this age group, and so said Georgetown. So I have asked them both to look and see what our pools are and see if we can put up a really good strong and competitive team for this tournament.

Also, one of the things that came out from the CBC meeting is the hosting of the tournament. Nobody wants to host the competition because it’s not a money maker really and it’s costly. However, the big countries like The Bahamas, Puerto Rico and the BVIs and so on, they are willing to pay more per person to the host nation because they think it would be cheaper to travel than to host it.

So I’ve put up this challenge to my sub-associations to come up with a strong team and so yes, it’s a possibility that we’ll request to host the tournament once they (LABA and GABA) can say to me yes, we have a strong or very competitive unit, both male and female squad.

So, our General Council meeting is the first week in March and after then, with the outcome of the meeting and what we discussed and so on, we’ll make the proposal to the CBC.