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Story: Basketball

Cutting down the basket

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Cutting down the basket

C. J. Bruton of the New Zealand Breakers cuts down the net at the end of his team's 2012 victory in the Australian National Basketball League championship at Auckland's Vector Arena (now Spark Arena). The Breakers beat the Perth Wildcats to win the championship for the second year in a row. In the late 1940s US college teams invented the tradition of cutting down the net after a championship victory.

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by Simon Watts

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How to cite this page

John Saker, Basketball – Fall and rise, 1990s onwards, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/39900/cutting-down-the-basket (accessed 3 June 2026).

Story by John Saker, published 3 December 2012, updated 1 October 2015.