The Sal's NBL has sanctioned Property Brokers Manawatu Jets Head Coach Tim McTamney following an article published in Stuff on Saturday April 3.
The Jets have formally accepted the League's determination under rule 18.4.6 and agreed to the accompanying sanction.
The League’s determination and sanction is:
Under Rule 18.4.6 the NBL has determined Manawatu Jets Head Coach Tim McTamney has brought the League, a number of stakeholders and basketball into disrepute by way of making misleading, false and negative comments with a journalist for the purpose of publishing an article on Saturday April 3, 2021.
The League has determined that Manawatu Jets Head Coach Tim McTamney is to be fined $750 which will be fully suspended until December 31, 2021.
In deciding on the sanction the League has taken into account an apology provided by the Manawatu Jets stating that Coach McTamney had apologised and shown remorse for comments made to the journalist.
A number of inaccurate assumptions were made in the article, which was guised as an opinion piece, and these were taken directly from a conversation between Coach McTamney and the journalist.
League General Manager Justin Nelson provided the following statement:
“The assumptions made in this particular article were very inaccurate and unfortunately the journalist failed to check with the League on some of the information he was provided with and instead chose to publish that information without further clarification. Coach McTamney has confirmed that the article stemmed from a conversation he had with the journalist.”
“While Coach McTamney has advised the NBL he believes some of what he said was taken out of context, the fact remains that his comments led to a large number of false assumptions being made public. The promulgation of false information to media is not acceptable and can potentially be harmful for the League’s integrity, teams’ public profile, as well as misleading fans. Tim has shown remorse and he takes responsibility for this. The integrity of our sport is of the highest importance and we will not accept behaviour that could undermine that.”
In responding to the article, the League in particular would like to clarify the following:
1) Team audits are compulsory for NBL franchises and at least three audits have already been conducted since the conclusion of the 2020 Showdown. All teams are required to provide their audited accounts to the NBL at the conclusion of each season.
2) The claim that teams have budgets ‘three to four times that of the Manawatu Jets’ in season 2021 is completely false and in no way reflects the budget of any team in the competition.
3) The claim that two teams had ‘10 times the budget of the Manawatu Jets’ in season 2018 is completely false and in no way reflects the audited accounts provided by all teams to the League for that season.
4) The inference that the Coach of the Year Award for 2018 was incorrectly awarded is completely false. Jamie Pearlman (Nelson Giants) was voted the Coach of the Year in season 2018 by his peers. This was the result of a clear and fair process based on votes by all NBL Head Coaches at the time, and Pearlman was the clear winner.
The League will not issue any further statements on this matter.
