The
Philippine
Basketball Association (PBA), is a men's professional basketball
league in the Philippines composed of 10 company-branded franchised teams. It
is the first and oldest professional basketball league in Asia and the second
oldest in the world after the NBA. The league's regulations are a hybrid of
rules from FIBA and the NBA.
The
league played its first game at the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City on April 9,
1975. Its individual team offices are directed out of PBA head offices located
in Eastwood City in Quezon City. The league is currently headed by Commissioner
Chito Salud.
History
The
Philippine Basketball Association was founded as a "rebellion" of
nine teams from the now-defunct Manila Industrial and Commercial Athletic Association (MICAA)
which was tightly controlled by the Basketball
Association of the Philippines (BAP; now defunct), the then-FIBA
recognized national association. With the BAP controlling the MICAA, the league
was de jure amateur as players were only paid allowances, much
like what was done on other countries to circumvent the amateur requirement,
and to play in FIBA-sanctioned tournaments such as the Olympics. With the PBA
out of the BAP's control, they can freely pay salaries to their players, hence,
making the PBA the oldest professional basketball league outside the United
States; however this also caused the league's players from being barred from
playing in FIBA-sanctioned tournaments.
Season format
One
constant feature in the PBA is that unlike other leagues, there is no
"season champion;" instead, the season is divided into conferences or tournaments
(not to be confused with the definition of a "conference" in a
sporting context as a grouping of teams based on geography or historical
affiliation) wherein the teams compete for the conference cup. The winners of
the conference cups do not face each other at the end of the season to determine
the season; instead all conference champions are league champions, but winning
the All-Filipino conference is
the most prestigious conference of the season.
From
1975-2003, a season was usually
composed of three conferences. From the 1993 season, the conferences were named All-Filipino, Commissioner's and Governors Cups, usually ending in a best-of-7 Finals series
match wherein the winner takes the Conference Cup. If the same team wins all of
the conferences, the team is said to be the "Grand Slam" champion.
A draft
was held on January, with the season-ending Governors Cup ending in December.
In
2004,
then-commissioner Noli Eala introduced drastic changes to
the season calendar. He reduced the number of conferences from three to two and
changed the start of the season from February to October so that the league can
accommodate international tournaments that were frequently held from June to
September. Another reason for the change in schedule was the popularity of
college hoops, the NCAA and the UAAP,
whose basketball season runs from June to October each year.
The
first tournament is the Philippine Cup, which is
held from October to February the following year, where only locals are allowed
to play. The second tournament is the Fiesta Conference, held
from March to July, teams are allowed to field one foreign player called an
"import". The Philippine Cup is identical to the
All-Filipino Conference of the previous seasons. The rookie draft is now
usually held every August.
By
the 2010-2011 season, it was reverted back to the old three conference format,
although the October to August season was retained.
Teams
All franchises are owned by corporations, and are not based on a geographic locale, therefore they do not play in a "home stadium" and the league per se rents the different stadiums in which the teams play.A team's name is often divided into three parts; the first is the company name, then the product (can be omitted or merged with the next part), and a nickname - usually connected to the business of the company. For example, the San Miguel Beermen is a team owned by San Miguel Corporation, with the "beermen" nickname denoting the San Miguel Beer product.
The company name rarely changes - it can only change if the franchise is sold or if the mother company transfers the operations of the franchise into another subsidiary. The product name and the nickname often changes, as companies would maximize the publicity the league gives to its products.
No comments:
Post a Comment