Cage leagues to join hands for RP team

The country’s three big leagues – the Philippine Basketball Association, Philippine Basketball League and the Metropolitan Basketball Association – are joining hands to ensure the country gets the services of the best players at any level of international competition in the future.

The three leagues are coming up before the year ends with a short, medium and long-term blueprint designed to give the country a competitive team in the Southeast Asian Games, Asian Basketball Confederation, Southeast Asian Basketball Association, Asian Games and other international basketball competitions.

PBL commissioner Chino Trinidad said the cooperation shown by his fellow commissioners Jun Bernardino of the PBA and Ogie Narvasa of the MBA in finalizing a memorandum of agreement on player transfers recently showed the three leagues can indeed come together to draw up a systematic plan for selecting the national team.

"The fact is, for the first time, there is now a true, wholesome working relationship among the three leagues," said Trinidad.

"We will come up with a definite proposal to be presented to the Basketball Association of the Philippines," he added.

Previous talks initiated by Philippine Olympic Committee bogged down because of "miscommunications" with the BAP, prompting the leagues to call off the talks.

"We would like to resolve the issues before the year is over. We believe that although we are all in sports for business, we realize we also have to honor our national commitment," he said.

"We will come up with a definite proposal to be presented to the Basketball Association of the Philippines," he said.

"Now we are reviving the talks," said Trinidad. "(In our future talks) we don’t like to reach a point when a league shuts the door on any proposals, dahil maiipit lang ang basketball. It’s up to the BAP to accept or reject our proposal."

The main gist of the proposal is the formation of a national team for a short term, medium term and long term objective.

"The PBA has the best professional players, the MBA has role players, and the PBL has the best amateur players," said Trinidad. "We can assign leagues to take care of short term, medium term and longer term aspects of the program."

The only snag to the formation of a national team is the BAP, which claims sole authority to choose the members of any national team.

The BAP is the only national body recognized by the international basketball federation (FIBA).

The long term would include creating a pool of amateurs who will be prepared on a longer term as national players before they are allowed to turn pro or create a pool of professionals who can be tapped for regular training with the consent of their ball clubs.

The three leagues are also set to sign this week amemorandum of agreement restricting the transfer of players with unsettled accounts or bad records or have unfinished contracts to the other leagues.

This means players banned in the PBA will also be banned in the PBL or MBA, and players whose services are terminated by their coaches may now find difficulty getting a playing contract elsewhere.

The MOA, which covers locals and foreigners, requires a player to submit clearance from his previous ball club and league before he can transfer to any other team outside his league.

Trindad said a team will have the option to notify the player’s new team if his coach had attitude problems with his player or has been subjected to any disciplinary action by the team owner.

"The three commissioners agree that there must be some semblance of order in our leagues," said Trinidad.