I just don't think people who post this stuff understand either the Euroleague model or what travel in Asia means.

The conflict stuff over NZ versus NBL is easily resolved, the bigger problem is that the NZ club would be participating outside of their regular season.

Euroleague has a part home/away, part tournament structure. It progresses through phases because it has enough teams for this. You can only make a very limited model of that for eight teams.

Clubs play in Euroleague, not leagues, so there would likely be no income stream for the NBL unless they run it. The clubs sure, but you just loaded up their costs as well.

But travel is the killer. You have to play home and away. A Moscow team traveling to Madrid is about 5 hours. That's possibly the longest trip in Euroleague - there might be some longer where a club has to make connections through another city.

The minimum trip for an Australian team is probably 6 hours into Singapore from Perth. But if you are Adelaide, and playing a team in Manila, you are at least 10 hours in the air plus transit. This is punishing once, but extenuating 4-5 times within an NBL season, where you are otherwise doing long travel within Australia. Auckland to Beijing would be a killer.

We forget that with the exception of Russia, national leagues and cup competitions within Europe have very small travel times - maybe two hours at worst. Perth - Cairns, NZ - Adelaide, Cairns - Adelaide are all much longer than this. Add mid-week long haul international to that ... you have a bunch of very fatigued players...

You are right anon..

A-league however runs for 27 rounds + finals. They generally only play one game a week. AFC games also (sometime) occur outside their season windows. And the A-league can manage this into their season fixturing because venues are more accessible.

The impact on their actual playing season is smaller.

NBL runs a shorter season, more games in a week etc.

You can't do that for NBL, because once you finish your NBL or Asian season you are off to another league (Sobey, Newley, Imports etc).

Good points Ho, there would be some indicators regarding the traveling and schedule clashing issue when the FIBA Asia qualification games begin this November when it seems overlap the first stage of NBL season. More thought is that the FIBA games will actually span over several windows some happen during NBL season. It would be good to see how good the governing organizations can manage that. Eventually if the model could draw sustainable and significant revenue potential, there may attract real initiative on the professional league model. My intention on this topic is debate whether similar model would generate good enough revenue and eventually support back local league/team development.

Some thoughts on the issue.

1. There already is an Asian club championships, but it is in a short tournament format with all games at one venue, rather than a league format. Here is the link to lasy year's title. Memory serves me that the dates (October 8-16) were around the same time as the Australian blitz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_FIBA_Asia_Champions_Cup
2. To change into a league format, a naming rights sponsorship would have to occur from an airline (similar to Super Rugby for example), because of the need to subsidise costs while flying whole teams around Asia in business class.
3. Other major partners would have to include the NBA (because FIBA, let alone FIBA Asia don't have funds to contribute to this) and sponsors with a wide reaching effect. If a league format were adopted, the NBL and/or BA wiould have to help subsidise costs for teams to want to enter.
4.If a league format was adopted,teams would have to be divided into a conference type format, because although travelling to say, Manila or Shanghai is maybe 10 hours from eastern Australia, travelling to the Middle East or Central Asia (a large number of FIBA Asia members are in these places) would take maybe double with connections. Effectively it would mean that the west and east Asian conference winners would meet for the title (this happens in the AFC football/soccer championship).

I read this and thought you meant that NBL clubs would be playing against Fiji and Tonga and Samoan clubs... is the travel still a killer even for those 'contests' as the result would be an almost certainty but if this was about trying to grow the sport and the Oceania region then would it be worth it at all?

Teams may find some raw talent out there, think of the way rugby league has embraced the giant wingers and maybe you could have a banger inside that can cause match up problems with his pace ?

this, again? sigh.

this is what I posted the last two times this topic came up:

September 2015
https://www.hoops.com.au/forum/37880-is-an-asian-champions-league-on-the-agenda/#p548434

I've posted about this a million times before! It is a pipe-dream unless it is funded by the NBA Asia office and the standard across East Asia or SE Asia is raised dramatically. Otherwise, the competition will simply either run out of money, send clubs broke, or attract minimal interest.

FIBA Asia has just moved their office to Lebanon (from Malaysia), so their focus has moved alot further west than what it was previously.

Australian club teams would kill anything East Asia or SE Asia has to offer, and that includes both Chinese club sides and (outside of the Chinese national team) any other national side in East Asia or SE Asia. I'm fat, slow, and never played ABL, yet me and a bunch of students / expats regularly scrimmage, compete with, and occasionally beat the Malaysian national team.

Every other pan-Asian or SE-Asian league that has been implemented has essentially failed or exists solely due to the generosity of benefactors (e.g. Tony Fernandes and Erick Thohir with the ASEAN Basketball League).

Fan support outside of China or the Philippines for basketball is practically non-existent.

Australian basketball should focus on getting its product right first and marketing itself as an attractive financial option for D-League and second-tier Australian players who won't make the NBA. That will take time and patience. There is no easy fix.

Australian basketball fans need to be patient! The new NBL hasn't even started yet.

Source: I live in Asia and attend ASEAN Basketball League matches (when they are scheduled and ACTUALLY played when schedule)!"

May 2015
https://www.hoops.com.au/forum/37029-will-a-asia-pac-basketball-league-sustainable/#p527537

I live in SE Asia. I work in international sports.

With respect, this has about as much chance of happening successfully as me being the next President of the USA.

1) no-one will pay for it
2) NBA and NBA China are specifically focused on growing Chinese basketball and developing that marketing base
3) no-one will pay for it
4) there simply isn't any love for basketball in SE Asia outside of the Philippines and even then, it's organised horribly
5) no-one will pay for it

The NBA Asia office out of Hong Kong has been looking to put together a "Champions League" style competition for some time now in East Asia / SE Asia in conjunction with FIBA Asia, but it's been aborted because of cost and competitiveness reasons.

The only thing that has a hope of working is a World Championship style 3-4 weeks centralised tournament in one or two specific countries.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but we're a lifetime away from a "Asia Pacific League"

Perhaps when this thread dies out it could be closed and stickied so we don't keep flogging a dead horse every year or so.

In relation to Libertine, I also live in Asia (Nanjing, China now), was also based in South Korea and Vietnam before and have travelled extensively through most Asian countries. I don't doubt your scrimmages with the Malaysian national team but I'm sure you realise that Malaysian/Se Asian basketball is far from the pinnacle of Asian basketball generally. To give you an idea, in the recently concluded SEABA (South-East Asian) championship in Manila,which served as a qualifying tournament to the Asian Championship in Lebanon this year and the later WC qualifiers, the Philippines ran roughshod over the competition, winning every game by an average of about 60 points. It's not a coincidence that SE Asia will be represented by one team only, while East Asia (PR China, Taiwan, Japan, etc) and West Asia (Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan etc) will have many more.

As for China, I went to the recent Jiangsu Dragons/Melbourne game in Nanjing, which was attended by about 3000 souls without any great fanfare and with both teams underhanded. Given that Jiangsu finished 14th in the 20 team CBA, the conclusion I drew was that some of these players could compete in the Australian NBL, it seems obvious that the Chinese teams in the blitz are development teams. Could definitely shoot and had legit size. And no, the referring wasn't so terrible to be rigged.

Basketball has OK crowds and media interest in Japan and Korea, they have some promising players on the world stage (Rui Hachimura, Yuta Watanabe, Yang Jae-Min) while I understand basketball is the national sport in Lebanon. Since there is no will to establish this sort of thing in Asia, I think building up the exposure of the Asian Club Championship, with teams from Aus/NZ competing, would help lift standards over the region.