June 10, 2020

PBA D-League re-start depends on fates of collegiate season

FOR the Philippine Basketball Association, the verdict on the fate of the COVID-stalled Season 45 as well as the route the Developmental League is taking moving forward can wait.

The PBA officials are not in a hurry to make a definitive decision especially as the Philippines is among many countries in the whole world still gripped by the health pandemic.

For PBA Season 45, the league board's reckoning period is the month of August. For the D-League, PBA execs depend their decision on the own fates of the major collegiate leagues - the UAAP and the NCAA.

"Right now, as we all know, most of our teams are collegiate teams so we're still waiting for the two major leagues for the announcement of their return," said PBA deputy commissioner and operations manager Eric Castro during the PSA Forum Tuesday.

"From there, we'll see in the calendar when we can re-start the D-League."

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The 2020 D-League Aspirants Cup unwrapped on March 2 and should have ended before the start of the collegiate season.

For all the teams except Marinerong Pilipino, the Aspirants Cup was to serve as part of their buildup for their respective collegiate leagues now also in state of uncertainty due to the pandemic.

The varsity teams are the AMA Online Education Titans, the Karate Kid-CEU Scorpions, the Diliman Blue Dragons, the Eco Oil-La Salle Green Archers, the Seaoil Extreme Racers-FEU Tamaraws, the FamilyMart-Enderun Titans, the Wang's Basketball Couriers-Letran Knights, the ADG Dong-Mapua Cardinals, the Apex Fuel-San Sebastian Stags, the TIP Engineers and the Builders Warehouse-UST Tigers.

As for their tournament fees in the COVID-interrupted D-League, Castro said it's like it's deposited in the bank in the meantime.(SB)