With the NBL1 announcing on Friday it would expand to South Australia in 2020, Basketball Ballarat chief executive Peter Eddy believes a format is in place for NBL1 conferences to play-off in a national format.

Sound familiar? It should.

Such a format existed for more than 25 years before its abolishment in the 2000s.

Known as the Australian Basketball Association (ABA), the semi-professional entity incorporated top leagues from different states to form a national club competition.

Eddy remembers it well. The Ballarat Miners won back-to-back ABA championships in 1994 and 1995, and may well have won a third if not for the collapse of league sponsor Ansett Airlines in 2001.

With NBL1 acquiring brand rights of the South East Australian Basketball League (SEABL), the Queensland Basketball League (QBL) and now the South Australian Premier League, Eddy said a platform was in place for conference winners - from NBL1 South, NBL1 North and now NBL1 Central - to playoff against each other.

"My personal view is that the culmination of creating the model now would be to see each of the NBL1 conferences playing off in a national format, and I certainly expect and hope that's the case," he said.

"I think the icing on the cake is now that Queensland and South Australia have come on board, it's only a matter of time before we see the likes of New South Wales and Western Australia join."

The NBL1 has yet to reveal its intentions. But it confirmed in a statement that clubs from all three conferences would converge on the State Basketball Centre in Victoria in the first weekend of September for the NBL1 finals series. It read that details around the structure would be announced soon.

"I think it would be good for the sport. I think it's good to have that extra level of competition to be able to test ourselves against another state," Eddy said.

"We've had that experience in the past, and to see it potentially coming back in what NBL1 is evolving to is really positive."

For Eddy, the re-implementation of a national second-tier competition would be a chance to re-create a golden era of Australian basketball that ended all too soon.

He said with the resurgence the game is enjoying at the top level, the sport was well on its way to becoming as strong as it was in the 1990s.

"I was disappointed when we didn't capitalise on that era at the time. We perhaps grew too quickly and presumed that the level we attained was going to continue," he said.

"But when we went through the decline, we were fortunate, particularly in Victoria that we had such a strong association base.

"And there was still a common view that the sport was still growing and thriving despite not having a strong national presence outside of the Boomers and Opals."

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