Samia and the organisation had a mutual understanding, after she had done her own due diligence on its operations, to sign a contract as general manager once it was out of the doldrums.
Two other staff members were helping manage the office to ensure when schools return for the new year "it's business as usual" in the code's commitment.
It's taken more than three months for the settling of accounts to ensure "there's no chances of us falling over". The Napier City Council, with the blessing of mayor Bill Dalton, has come to the rescue of Basketball HB in writing off $14,000 debt for the hire of Rodney Green Centennial Hall.
The Pettigrew-Green Arena in Taradale has granted it an extension on terms of payment to clear its debt of $23,506 for the use of facilities.
However, the Hastings District Council, amid administrative opposition to follow suit, on Thursday also embraced the PG Arena approach rather than emulating the Napier gesture in wiping off $15,000 for the hire of indoor courts.
"We've been going all right for almost 10 years but we're out of kilter now," Sullivan said, alluding to the eight-year reign of Paul Trass who retired last winter before Hart took over the reins.
He said the debts arose because of the staff's oversight "or mismanagement" in the handling of an under-13 representative tournament in the Bay last October as well as approving the costs of sending players to an age-group representative tournament in Rotorua.
Rotorua was a big success but unfortunately the staff had not done the ground work to secure funds before committing to the trip.
"You can't apply retrospectively for funding," Sullivan said of an organisation that banks on trust and pub and gaming charity funds.
"As soon as we spotted it [debts], we put our hand up," he said, pointing out members of the board were often people who had other fulltime businesses to tend to and performed the Basketball HB tasks as volunteers.
"All our money was spent on basketball, so there's no question on it being spent on anything else [or misappropriated]."
However, sources said Basketball HB staff didn't see eye-to-eye with Hart whose corporate approach didn't sit too well with the staff.
Sullivan said the staff were attuned to operating under the old regime of Trass "who had done a wonderful job".
"It was clash of styles" that prompted Hart "to look elsewhere".
"The organisation is an amateur one and not a system of big corporation and ... Chris realised it's not the kind of job he'd applied for.
"To his credit he stayed longer than he intended to. He's a great chap and not the cause of our woes," Sullivan said.
Compounding Basketball HB's problems were the exodus of staff.
Coaches, including former Hawks assistant coach Theo Tait, left last year.
"The jobs don't pay an awful lot," Sullivan said, juxtaposing it with the Hawke's Bay Magpies requiring money to lure pedigree players such as outgoing All Blacks captain Richie McCaw.
The staff were dedicated and often went beyond their call of duty.
Sullivan said Mark Aspden, of Sports Hawke's Bay, who sits on the Hawks franchise board meetings, had offered to help by sending a staff member to attend the Basketball Hawke's Bay board meetings.
Hart worked for a global recruitment company, Michael Page International, in London and Amsterdam for five years before helping it launch a branch in Auckland.
Three years later he moved to the Bay to work with another global recruitment company, Adecco, in Hastings.
The 33-year-old is a former Manawatu Jets small forward (2000-2004) who has been saddled with the task of taking a proud code to an echelon that Trass had labelled the "No1 second sport in the world".
At a microcosmic level in the Bay, basketball battles for venues to stage games to whet the appetite of 1000 teams weekly on an annual turnover of $1 million.
Hart had felt his corporate experience from a business-development perspective would have helped the organisation to continue to grow. He had emphasised the need to build commercial partnerships with regional businesses to implement the code's programmes.
He had suspected growing basketball further would have been difficult because of limitations on venues and emphasised the need to grow the game using purpose-built facilities with other codes.
He and wife Lauren got married in the Bay a few years ago so it was always their plan to return here for a lifestyle and proximity to relatives in Palmerston North.
