The Otago Nuggets' season-opening National Basketball League match against the newly-formed Auckland Pirates on April 13 will go ahead as scheduled.
The home team requested the game be brought forward a day to avoid a clash of dates with the New Zealand Breakers semifinal against the Perth Wildcats at the North Shore Events Centre.
Basketball Otago general manager Markham Brown said the franchise was open to the idea but the costs involved proved prohibitive.
"I've talked to the board of the Auckland team as it was just going to be too expensive to change all our flights at such short notice," Brown said.
It would have cost $8000 to reschedule and neither franchise nor the NBL board was prepared to foot the bill for the late change.
The Nuggets-Pirates game was going to be televised but may be canned from the programme schedule if Sky is covering the Breakers' match.
"I don't believe it will be [televised], unfortunately," Brown said.
"And it was the only chance for people to see us on the road."
However, the semifinal is a best-of-three series and the third match may not be required which would free Sky to cover the match as planned.
Meanwhile, the New Zealand Breakers hierarchy has defended a decision not to send nominees to last night's ANBL awards function, a decision that could draw sanctions from the league organisers.
Breakers chief executive Richard Clark said with game one of the semifinal series against defending champion Perth scheduled for Thursday night in Auckland it was decided head coach Andrej Lemanis plus players Dillon Boucher, Kevin Braswell, Mika Vukona, Tom Abercrombie and MVP contender Kirk Penney would not make the overnight trip to Melbourne.
"We made it clear two months ago that if the schedule was as it is this week, we would regretfully not commit players or coaching staff to the awards ceremony," Clarke said.
"Frankly, no team with the same desire to win facing the same schedule as us this week would do any different," said Clarke, who will represent the Breakers with chairman Paul Blackwell.
The Perth Wildcats contingent also opted out of the trans-continental journey on Sunday and a league spokesman said disciplinary action may be taken against both clubs when the ANBL board meets today.
