If you love basketball, and you live in the UK, then I'm sure that you will already be aware of the fact that the UK basketball community was given a back-hand to the face last month, when news arrived that UK Sport have cut basketball funding to zero. 

That's right, the sport of basketball was deemed unworthy of a single penny of funding in the run up to the 2016 Rio Olympics.

The consequences of such a brutal cut off are severe for basketball, which has been growing rapidly in the UK in the last few years. We can kiss goodbye to Team GB. With no funding, there's no way we'd ever be able to see Luol Deng or Joel Freeland line up for the UK, and there's no money to pay the coaches or support staff.  Don't even get me started on what this means for grass roots basketball in the UK and so called 'Olympic Legacy'.

So now it's time for basketball fans across the UK, to stand up and say something. The decision either needs to be reversed, or another funding body needs to step up and help basketball to continue to grow. 

A campaign called 'Fund British Basketball' has started, with the aim of getting enough people to sign a petition to make the government take notice of the situation, and to consider doing something about it. 

The petition can be found here: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/43456/

You need to sign it, then send it on to as many people as you possibly can, and get them to sign it. If each of us can just get 10 friends or family members to sign the petition, then we should be looking at a huge wave of support for basketball pretty quickly. 

To keep up to date with the campaign, you can visit the Fund British Basketball website, or monitor the hashtag #fundbritishbasketball on Twitter.

Do what's right.