With a slogan of “Emergence of the Heroes,” the 2015-2016 Super Basketball League (SBL) regular season starts this afternoon when the Yulon Luxgens take on the Fubon Braves at the Banciao Gymnasium in New Taipei City.
With the addition of Jeremy Lin’s younger brother, Joseph Lin, and former Phillipines national team icon Marcus Douthit, as well as the coaching debut of Ben Metcalf of Pure Youth Construction, replacing the departed Hsu Chin-che, the season promises to be an exciting one, as the seven squads begin a five-month journey in their quest for the title next spring.
“With five of the seven teams starting the new season with new coaches at the helm and a slew of big-name players looking to showcase their talents, we shall have an incredible season this year,” Chinese Taipei Basketball Association director-general Ting Shou-chung said at a press conference earlier this week.
Ting said that with most of the usual venues under renovation in preparation for the 2017 Universiade in Taipei and therefore not available this season, 85 percent of the games would be played at the Banciao Gymnasium, with the exception of the Changhua County Gymnasium, which is due to host league games for two weeks next month.
With a similar format to last year, each week’s games commence on Thursday evenings and run through to Sunday, with two games scheduled to be played each day to provide fans with an appropriate dosage of hoops excitement.
Pure Youth’s new head coach will miss the services of big man Quincy Davis, who announced his retirement earlier in the month. He is being replaced by former Fubon great and last season’s Foreign Player of the Year Darian Townes, who was not re-signed by the Braves.
Townes will be working closely with Davis, who will remain on the Pure Youth coaching staff.
Also returning for his second stint in Taiwan is former Taiwan Mobile Leopards great Luke Nevill of Australia, who will anchor the interior defense for Bank of Taiwan under the guidance of head coach Hung Rei-cheng.
Last, but not least among the newcomers is Fubon Braves center Earl Barron, whose 213cm frame played a big part in the Braves’ decision to forgo Townes in favor of the former National Basketball Association standout.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
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