A public stoush has erupted between Basketball Australia and Liz Cambage's manager over the handling of a "race row" involving the Opals superstar and a teammate.
Mitch Catlin on Tuesday slammed BA for its response to Alice Kunek's "blackface" dress-up at an end-of-season WNBL party, to which Cambage took offence via social media.
Catlin, in an opinion piece for Fairfax Media, said BA had "washed its hands of the issue" and took particular aim at CEO Anthony Moore for labelling it a club matter for the Melbourne Boomers.
"Anyone involved in sport would be misguided if they believed the race row that is gripping the Opals basketball team will blow over quickly," he wrote.
"And it could not have come at a worse time."
Moore hit back, saying Catlin's commentary was "not helpful".
"I can't remember for the life of me the last time that's occurred," the former AFL and cricket administrator told SEN radio on Tuesday.
"Being in AFL, I can't remember Craig Kelly or Paul Connors writing an opinion piece on the matter of one of their clients."
But Moore acknowledged Catlin made a number of valid points, which he said would be addressed at a meeting with Cambage's management in Canberra on Tuesday with Opals coach Brendan Joyce and high performance boss Jan Stirling.
BA has also promised to remind the national women's basketball team about the dangers of social media at the first of four pre-Olympic camps next month.
Moore agreed the Cambage-Kunek drama would've been better dealt with privately instead of on Twitter.
"That's certainly something we'll be addressing with the playing squad when we get them together at the end of March," he said.
"The challenge with dealing with these issues, particularly when they get into social media, it just develops a life of its own.
"Once the fire's lit, off it goes. And they are sometimes hard to contain."
The Opals are chasing their sixth consecutive Olympic medal in Rio.
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