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AsiaBasket
AsiaBasket is an Asian men's professional basketball league founded in 2021. The league hosts tournaments mainly consisting of professional and collegiate teams based in Southeast Asia. Originally called the Filipino Basketball League, or FilBasket in short, it initially began as a domestic basketball tournament in the Philippines. Its first tournament was the 2021 Subic Championship held in October 2021. The league began inviting international teams in 2022, marking the start of the league's international expansion. The league was renamed as AsiaBasket beginning with the 2023 International Championship. Seven teams have won the championship once, with the most recent champions being the NU Bulldogs, who won the 2024 International Championship. HistoryFilBasket era (2021–2022)FilBasket was established by former UAAP player Jai Reyes and Buddy Encarnado of the Maharlika Pilipinas Basketball League's Pasig Sta. Lucia Realtors in 2021.[1][2] It was founded as a means to provide a platform for basketball players whose careers were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines. This includes players of the Maharlika Pilipinas Basketball League which saw its 2019–20 season suspended and the succeeding 2021 season delayed due to COVID-19 measures. Hence, multiple MPBL teams joined the FilBasket tournaments as a way to continue playing competitive games, beginning a trend of MPBL teams taking part in other leagues during the off-season.[2] First tournament and disputeFilBasket began its first tournament, the Subic Championship, on October 28, 2021, after securing approval from the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) and the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) for a bubble tournament at the Subic Bay Gymnasium.[3][4] The tournament, however, did get the disputed by the Games and Amusements Board (GAB) regarding its amateur status, with the GAB contending that it is a professional league, and later issuing a cease and desist order.[5][6] Eventually, the GAB didn't go further with the legal action and FilBasket would subsequently begin the transition to professional status after sending a letter of intent to the GAB, which would be competed by February 2022.[7][8] 2022As FilBasket turned professional, the league began attracting the Asian basketball market with the 2022 Summer Championship, which ran from March until May 2022. The tournament featured the first international team: the Kuala Lumpur Aseel based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, being invited as a guest team.[9] The following tournament would also be its first international tournament, the 2022 International Championship held in the latter part of 2022 in Malaysia.[10] It was also the first tournament under the current format, replacing the traditional round-robin format of other Philippine basketball leagues with a group-stage format. AsiaBasket era (since 2023)2023On March 3, 2023, FilBasket announced their renaming to AsiaBasket to accommodate with the expansion into the Asian basketball market. The first tournament under the AsiaBasket name was the 2023 International Championship, which also took place in Malaysia in April 2023. Although the league previously stated that the FilBasket name would be retained for local competitions in the Philippines, the AsiaBasket name was still used for the 2023 Las Piñas Championship in July 2023, which featured an all-Filipino roster of teams competing in Las Piñas.[11] The 2023 Dasmariñas Championship then took place in Dasmariñas, Cavite, Philippines in November 2023, and featured United States–based Statham Academy led by Filipino-American Taylor Statham, marking the first time the league featured a team based outside of Asia. 2024AsiaBasket then intended to host its first tournament in Visayas with the 2024 Cebu Championship.[12] It was initially announced to start in April at the Hoops Dome in Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu before moving to the Toledo City Sports Center in Toledo, Cebu, and subsequently postponing it to May. The tournament would eventually not push through and would later be replaced by the 2024 International Championship, which will take place at Enderun Colleges in Taguig beginning July 9, 2024. TeamsInternational 2024The following teams will compete in the 2024 AsiaBasket International Championship.
Previous teamsThe following teams competed in previous tournaments since the 2022 FilBasket International Championship, the first to include international teams as regular competitors. FilBasket eraThe following teams competed in the league's two domestic tournaments, the 2021 FilBasket Subic Championship and the 2022 FilBasket Summer Championship. As of International 2024, no domestic teams competed in future tournaments.
List of tournamentsNumbers in parentheses indicate the number of times that team has appeared in each tournament's championship game, as well as each respective teams' record in those games.
See alsoReferences
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