BANMI President Elias Rangamar said they will sit down with other basketball league organizers in the next few months and try to work out the possibility of having better plans when putting up leagues on the island.
This, he said is to anticipate the bad effect of too many leagues not only on the players but on the each league itself.
Rangamar and BANMI referees’ association president, Gabriel White said it also occurred to them that many players have spread themselves a lot to four different leagues.
There is no problem with having too many basketball leagues, White stressed, but if they all happen at the same time it can adversely affect not only the players or the teams but each of the entire league as well.
The IT&E Inter-government & Business Basketball League and the Saipan Rotary Club Youth Basketball League which are sanctioned BANMI is in the middle of regular season when Pilipino Contract Workers Association Basketball League opened a few months ago. Earlier this month, the Unified Basketball Association Men’s League started.
Although there are too many basketball enthusiasts on Saipan, same faces usually appear in the court in every basketball leagues that come around.
Many of active players now participate in the three of the ongoing leagues. The problem started to surface when some of them have either exhausted themselves enough or injured themselves in one league that they could no longer show up in the next.
This oftentimes results in forfeit games when their respective teams fail to complete the line up.
Every sports organization outside BANMI is independent and White wants to make it clear that BANMI can not stop them from organizing leagues, it is their right.
But these organizers, he said should consider balance of schedules to avoid conflicts.
The longest basketball league with at least 12 teams participating can run as long as three months so it is possible that more than one or two different leagues can happen in one year, but not concurrently.
The Rotary and IT&E Inter-government & Business, White said should have been finished in three months. But since there were many things that happened beyond control of the organizers, game schedules kept pushing back too often.
Rangamar said that although BANMI will get itself busy for the Micronesian Games next year and may not organize a local basketball league, all basketball organizers on the island should come together and share notes when it comes to scheduling.
