Let's Go, Dragons!

Basketball is a decent candidate for a sports entertainment franchise. The rules are easy (put the ball in the basket), the game's egalitarian (you only need the ball and the basket). And -- while the game may lack the brainy stimulation of more strategic team games like football or cricket -- the lightning back-and-forth is viscerally exciting. 

Take last month's match between the KL Dragons and Indonesia's Satria Muda BritAma, at the Malaysian Basketball Association (MABA) Stadium. The atmosphere, that night, was electric. The mother of two seated behind me squealed every time a lay-up seemed imminent. With the home team trailing ten points behind, a bystander angrily shouted "Come on!", as if raging against physics itself.

"Right now we are trying to grow the audience base," said Bombshelter Studio's Marcus Low, when I met him before the match. Bombshelter is the firm in charge of promoting the Dragons. They seem to be succeeding. On a rainy weekday evening, the hall was nearly full.

The KL Dragons represent Malaysia in the brand-new ASEAN Basketball League (ABL); the current season, which ends in February, is the league's first. The ABL currently boasts six teams (Singapore Slingers, Brunei Barracudas, etc). It's got huge corporate backing -- from the multinational General Electric, Indonesian media conglomerate E-Live Entertainment, and Datuk Tony Fernandes's growing empire (Tony is the ABL's current president). The Dragons themselves boasts big guns: they were founded by Datuk Robin Tan (of Berjaya), Ruben Gnanalingam (of Westport), and political scion Datuk Wira Dani Daim. 

But deep pockets don't automatically translate into public interest. Footie occupies most sports enthusiasts; that hegemony is tough to compete with. "It's a challenge," Low admitted. The KL Dragons, with its cheerleaders, MC-led chants, and half-time prize giveaways, seems to be adopting a top-down approach: emulate the NBA, and the people will come. It seems to be working -- though how widespread the attention will be is as yet unclear.

"It's the first time I'm involved in a professional league," said the Dragon's forward B Guganeswaran. "There's a lot of pressure."

One of the reasons the ABL exists is to provide an avenue for people to consider professional team sports a viable career. "Here, many families can't support their kids going into sports," revealed Wee Chuan Chin, another Dragons player. "This is a beginning." 

With two minutes left on the clock the score was 53 - 65, in Satria Muda's favour. The small contingent of Indonesian supporters was going wild. The Malaysian audience, in contrast, had already begun to trickle out of the stadium. After the game, the KL Dragons player I met expressed remorse. "We want to say sorry to our fans," said Guganeswaran. "We can do better than this."

For more information, including upcoming match dates, visit the KL Dragon's official website (http://kldragons.com).

Text Zedeck Siew

Article taken from KLue Magazine February 2009, Issue 136.