{"id":799136,"date":"2026-07-14T06:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T06:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/799136\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T06:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T06:14:10","slug":"why-australia-is-a-destination-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/799136\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Australia is a “destination market”"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the Adelaide 36ers may have already completed their roster, General Manager of Basketball Operations Matt Weston is still putting in the work at NBA Summer League in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s looking for future years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like to come to Summer League and look for that season, because it can get pretty tight.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about next year and the year after. Be able to follow players and see how they go in this environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 36ers have re-upped a squad that fell agonisingly short of a championship last season.<\/p>\n

With Bryce Cotton locked in and all three imports, Zylan Cheatham, Nick Rakocevic and John Jenkins, re-signing, Weston believes attracting high-level talent is becoming easier than ever.<\/p>\n

\u201cAustralia is a real destination market now,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgents are saying they really want to get to Australia, so it has come a long way.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not all about money, because we’ve got guys coming for the money that we are paying, which is still very good, maybe not where those European or Japanese teams are, but they get to live in Adelaide on the beach for seven eight months and love life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 36ers have attracted some of the League\u2019s best imports in recent years, and their ability to retain them across multiple seasons further reinforces Weston\u2019s point.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe league is really well respected,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheres a lot of big time agents out of Europe calling \u2026 the weather, English speaking, it\u2019s a great competition, it’s live on tv and you get a lot of exposure.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlayers are like \u2018yeah, I\u2019ll take a little haircut on the price, but I\u2019m only going to do it for seven months and then I\u2019ll go to Puerto Rico or China and earn really good money and only live there two months a year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the Adelaide 36ers may have already completed their roster, General Manager of Basketball Operations Matt Weston is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-799136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}