NBL owners mull hiring lawyers or hoping for transparency after inconclusive meeting

Illawarra Hawks have their own MAGA man in Jared Novelly who’s joined Donald Trump’s New Zealand ambassador.

Should the owners of NBL clubs trust a promise by the basketball league to hand over its financial documents, or should they lawyer up and join Jared Novelly’s Illawarra Hawks in court on Friday?

That’s the big question after a NBL owners meeting on Thursday, in which Larry Kestelman’s National Basketball League promised to hand over to all clubs any financial documents ordered for release by the court.

Novelly has lodged action in the Supreme Court of NSW seeking access to documents which may shed light on the league’s financial structure and transparency – issues that Hawks owner Novelly, appointed by President Donald Trump to be America’s ambassador to New Zealand, has been agitating about for quite some time.

A discovery motion will be heard on Friday, which may also result in South East Melbourne Phoenix, led by majority owner Romie Chaudhari, joining Illawarra as a plaintiff. Also potentially Perth Wildcats owner Mark Arena and former owners of Brisbane Bullets, New Zealand Breakers, and possibly others, according to rumours doing the rounds on Thursday.

The thought was they’d all have to join the legal action to get access to any documents the NBL may have to hand over to Illawarra, if ordered by the court.

But that may not be the case, according to a circular we saw, in which the league says it would have “no hesitation about providing all clubs with copies of documents that are produced within appropriate parameters …” because “as we have always said, the NBL has nothing to hide”.

NBL owner Larry Kestelman speaks to the media on Monday. Picture: Getty Images

That might raise a few eyebrows among owners, given Novelly has been forced to head to the courts in order to get answers to questions about the league’s financial position and any potential conflicts of interest in Kestelman’s business dealings within the league – particularly the license agreement between the NBL and the Tasmania Jackjumpers, in which Kestelman formerly held a stake.

Novelly clearly begs to differ, and we wonder if the clubs now don’t join Novelly’s case because they think the NBL will provide them with the information anyway? But would that then be used to claim a public victory given it would then appear Novelly is going it alone in the courts?

There’s no doubt Kestelman has done a great job growing the NBL in the past decade, but the owners have been after more information from him about the league’s financial ins and outs for some time. That is basically the aim of Novelly’s court case.

The NBL had an owners meeting on Thursday, telling them “we will not be talking about the current dispute between Jared/Illawarra … and Larry/NBL”, despite that basically being the only thing the owners wanted to talk about.

They did get a long speech from Kestelman about integrity and his achievements with the league, though.

We’re told the only owner asking most of the questions was Tesla chairwoman Robyn Denholm, who recently cashed out $310m worth of the carmaker’s stock. Denholm is the majority owner of the Sydney Kings. She also owns the Women’s NBL – with Kestelman, as it happens.