KEY POINTS:
Next year's national basketball league will be a nine-team affair after the struggling Otago Nuggets failed to come up with their entry fee.
But despite fears several teams could exit the league, the Nuggets are the lone casualty after the Bay Hawks and Canterbury Rams were saved by last-ditch rescue packages.
The bottom-placed team in each of the last two NBL seasons, the Nuggets failed to produce the $5000 entry fee by last Friday's deadline, and Basketball Otago opted to withdraw the team.
"The lack of representation from Otago is very unfortunate, especially considering how much work has gone into trying to save the Nuggets over the last few weeks," NBL chairman Sam Rossiter-Stead said.
He said he hoped Basketball Otago would be in position to enter a team when the league was revamped in 2010.
"We will consider submissions from new and existing teams next year as we look to reshape the competition into one with a greater degree of financial viability and sustainability.
"This work has already begun in earnest and will continue throughout 2009 as we look to secure new, long-term business partners."
It was not all doom and gloom, however, with perennial strugglers Canterbury scraping together their entry fee and Hawkes Bay, one of the league's leading lights, returning from seeming oblivion just three days after chief executive Michael Barbour claimed he had been made redundant and the franchise wound up.
"We are particularly delighted that the people of Hawkes Bay have rallied round to save the Hawks," Rossiter-Stead said.
"We can now press ahead with our planning and expect to finalise next year's draw in the very near future."
The demise of the Hawks would have been a bitter blow for a league that has lurched from crisis to crisis in recent seasons.
Last season's finals series was marred by a row over Auckland's eligibility after the franchise failed to pay the final instalment of its entry fee.
The Stars were initially booted out of the playoffs, with their spot being handed to Taranaki. But that decision was reversed at the 11th hour when the Stars threatened legal action.
The struggles of the New Zealand franchises have mirrored the situation in the Australian NBL, where the Sydney Kings and Brisbane Bullets went to the wall this season and a second Sydney team, the Spirit, had to be bailed out midseason.
