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Rockets Fans Around the Globe: Australia

By Tom Martin
Big Dave resides second from the left in the back row. Though he's not quite as tall as fellow Australian Andrew Bogut, "Dayuve" has a better jump shot. And yes, that was a cheap attempt at writing with an Australian accent.
Big Dave resides second from the left in the back row. Though he's not quite as tall as fellow Australian Andrew Bogut, "Dayuve" has a better jump shot. And yes, that was a cheap attempt at writing with an Australian accent.

To celebrate the arrival of David Andersen, I give you the country of Australia, mate.  Though Jamie neglects to mention Andersen in the post below, it still provides some interesting insight into how basketball ranks among other sports down under.  Send in your submissions to the global quest for Rockets fans. We'd like as many as possible in order to see where all of you guys are coming from. Send all submissions to tommartin@thedreamshake.com or tweet them here.

Name: Jamie Barr

Username: Dream34

"G'day from Australia fellow Rockets fanatics!!

I first became a fan of the Rockets via the great Hakeem Olajuwon in '89 at the age of 6. I was lucky enough to see the NBA Allstar-Game that year (the only NBA game shown in Australia) and I was immediately fascinated by this amazing athlete. Ever since, I've been a Rocket for life (I had a little hiatus for basketball when the rockets traded Hakeem when his last contract was up for negotiation, I was so pissed off that I took 3 years off and am still pretty dirty about it today). Although, I still collect cards and memorabilia of Olajuwon (over 1000 different cards of him) and I was lucky enough to meet him in 94' when he came over for the Jam Session tour.

Popularity of Basketball in Australia is rated about 5th behind 4 types of football (AFL, RUGBY LEAGUE, SOCCER, RUGBY UNION) mainly because of the weak showing of our own national league which has pretty much collapsed over the last 4 years. 

With teams folding and not much media coverage, it's dropping off the radar.

The NBA on the other hand is more popular then our NBL but we have such a tiny population of only 23 million people that TV stations haven't shown much interest. We have just got a free to air TV station that is sport only and they were showing the last part of the season but it was a delayed telecast (by 2 hours) but maybe next season we will get more then 2 games a week and it live! This will bump the popularity of the NBA tenfold in Australia as it hasn't been massive since the basketball/NBA boom of 93'-96.

You mostly see Lebron/Kobe and jerseys being worn and the Cavs, Celtics, Lakers (fakers) and Bulls are the most popular teams here. There is the odd Rockets fan but it's very rare and there are certainly not other fanatics!

Appreciate it, Jamie  Keep it up, Rockets fans!

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