In the 1989 film Field of Dreams, Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella is famously inspired by a mysterious voice, "if you build it, he will come".
There were shades of that message this week when National Basketball League owner Larry Kestelman told the Herald "the No.1 thing that stops Newcastle (from joining the NBL) right now is the lack of a venue".
For basketball enthusiasts, and sports fans more broadly in the Hunter, that is a clear, and confronting, reality with the ageing Newcastle Entertainment Centre not up to scratch.
Unlike the Academy Award-nominated movie featuring Kevin Costner, we're not talking about a cornfield here, or a place for ghosts of a bygone era to come back and play.
We're talking about the establishment of a top level venue for a city where basketball at the grassroots level is thriving.
In 2017, the Coalition state government promised to build a new indoor arena at "Hunter Park" and late last year, the Herald revealed a leaked "masterplan" for the precinct, which would include a new 11,000-seat entertainment centre.
The Coalition hasn't committed to funding the project and Labor leader Chris Minns last week said his party wouldn't either until it saw the business case.
The Herald reports today that the project is City of Newcastle's number one "ask" of both sides of politics for this month's state election.
Wests Group is prepared to bankroll an NBL and Super Netball franchise if the government honours its promise to build the entertainment centre and as Newcastle sports fans have shown with the Knights and Jets, they'll turn up given the opportunity.
Kestelman laid out the blueprint for Newcastle to return to the NBL, which includes teams from Wollongong, Hobart and Cairns - all with smaller populations than the Hunter.
Newcastle has not fielded an NBL team since the demise of the Hunter Pirates in 2006. Before the Pirates, the Newcastle Falcons were the city's basketball flagship for 20 years, from 1979-99.
"There are the four factors we have to tick off in considering a new franchise - venue, government [support], community and corporate. In my mind, community is not a question. Basketball is strong in the region and the city is big enough. I feel pretty confident about corporate," he said.
"For me it is a question of government and venue. They are the two which need to be ticked off."
The time for dreaming is over. Let's play.
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