The accountant who audited Basketball Otago's 2013 accounts did not believe the situation was ''insurmountable''.
BBO last week advised its members it would hold a special meeting on December 16 to ratify the appointment of a liquidator.
On Wednesday, it reported a deficit of $45,199 for the 2013 financial year, leaving the organisation with negative equity of $98,030.
Phillip Trounson, of Audit Professionals, told the Otago Daily Times BBO's negative equity position was significant but liquidation was not inevitable.
Grants totalling $93,000 advanced to BBO on December 31 effectively wiped out the deficit from 2013, and a further $80,500 of income received from Oceana Gold in January 2014 meant the financial position was recoverable, he said.
''That sort of negative equity position is not insurmountable,'' Trounson said.
''There have been many, many examples of entities that have had quite large negative equity position and with a lot of effort have been able to turn it around.
''They don't do that overnight. Even the New Zealand Basketball Association took a couple of years to come right.''
In his view, BBO could have kept trading unless the organisation had accrued more debt in the past 11 months.
The financial picture will become clear at a special meeting next month. However, several sources close to the issue have told the Otago Daily Times BBO has amassed further debt of up to $100,000.
Bank statements for the period May 22 to July 9 obtained by the newspaper suggests BBO's outgoings were significant.
The wage bill for the Nuggets alone was sizeable. Import players Warren Carter and Brandon Bowdry received weekly payments of $1500 and $1200 respectively.
Brendon Polyblank was paid $1388.89. Tony Tolovae got $300 and Sam King also received a small sum.
Player-coach and director of development Mark Dickel's salary was split into three separate weekly payments.
He was paid $764.53 for his development role, but the $777.77 he received for his Nuggets playing and coaching contract was paid into his mother-in-law's account in two separate payments.
''It was approved by the board and declared in my tax returns,'' Dickel said when contacted for comment.
''I requested BBO [that] it be paid directedly to my mother-in-law, as she was living with me and I was supporting her.''
BBO chairman Ricky Carr did not respond to email questions about Dickel's split wages, and former BBO general manager Markham Brown could not be reached for comment.
Trounce said such an arrangement sounded ''unusual''.
''Employees can direct payment to someone else. That can happen but normally staff that are employed are paid directly.''
Former office and events manager Sandy Wallace also described it as unusual.
Wallace worked for BBO for five years before she was made redundant in June via email.
In her opinion, a lot of BBO's financial problems stem from a development programme she described as ''unsustainable''. BBO was not recovering the cost of running the programme.
''I was asked by [former board member] Chris Timms to start doing the financial forecasting on a weekly basis - the cash flow - because I could see it was being a problem,'' Wallace said.
''Chris and I had many a telephone conversation ... with regards to the development programme. We had been running the academy for two years free of charge yet incurring court costs for it.''
Wallace was also critical of the decision to allow Dickel to run his own holiday camps in competition with BBO.
''If you were a painter, you would not let another painter come in under your banner and share your clients. That was revenue opportunities taken away from BBO.''
