THE MINDANAO-Visayas Basketball Association and the National Basketball Conference ended their bitter rivalry for dominance to pave the way for the creation of the Liga ng Pilipinas.
Former PBA commissioner Noli Eala is the brainchild behind the creation of the nationwide regional basketball league, which is aimed to discover new talents from the grassroots.
“The MVBA, NBC and Third Force had agreed to join forces to form a super regional league which we call Liga ng Pilipinas,” Eala told Cebu sports reporters yesterday.
MVBA founder Raul “Yayoy” Alcoseba and league chairman of the board Gov. Oscar Moreno, NBC secretary general Tito Palma and president Nathaniel “Tac” Padilla and Eala had already met twice and will finalize the agreement to launch the regional basketball tournament, patterned after the defunct Metropolitan Basketball
Association (MBA).
“The league is a community-based, community and LGU-supported amateur basketball league, just like the MBA, but not with the same budget. We keep the cost low to make the tournament viable, built from the ground not built from the stars like what MBA did,” Eala said.
There will be 16 teams participating in the league, which will have two conferences a year. Eight teams will be from the Luzon, four from the Visayas and four from Mindanao and the 16 will be divided into the North and South divisions.
The tournament will use the home-and-away format as the team vies for the division titles to determine who will play in the national championship.
“There are many teams wanting to join but we will be setting guidelines and criteria on which city to allow (to put up team). There will be merging (of existing teams) to accommodate,” Eala added.
However, the MVBA and NBC will not cease to exist. Eala said that they are allowed to put up separate pocket tournaments for the promotions and entertainment of their respective leagues. (RCM)
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
MVBA, NBC unite to put up Liga ng Pilipinas
Sunstar-Cebu | Wednesday, October 24, 2007
THE MINDANAO-Visayas Basketball Association and the National Basketball Conference ended their bitter rivalry for dominance to pave the way for the creation of the Liga ng Pilipinas.
Former PBA commissioner Noli Eala is the brainchild behind the creation of the nationwide regional basketball league, which is aimed to discover new talents from the grassroots.
“The MVBA, NBC and Third Force had agreed to join forces to form a super regional league which we call Liga ng Pilipinas,” Eala told Cebu sports reporters yesterday.
MVBA founder Raul “Yayoy” Alcoseba and league chairman of the board Gov. Oscar Moreno, NBC secretary general Tito Palma and president Nathaniel “Tac” Padilla and Eala had already met twice and will finalize the agreement to launch the regional basketball tournament, patterned after the defunct Metropolitan Basketball
Association (MBA).
“The league is a community-based, community and LGU-supported amateur basketball league, just like the MBA, but not with the same budget. We keep the cost low to make the tournament viable, built from the ground not built from the stars like what MBA did,” Eala said.
There will be 16 teams participating in the league, which will have two conferences a year. Eight teams will be from the Luzon, four from the Visayas and four from Mindanao and the 16 will be divided into the North and South divisions.
The tournament will use the home-and-away format as the team vies for the division titles to determine who will play in the national championship.
“There are many teams wanting to join but we will be setting guidelines and criteria on which city to allow (to put up team). There will be merging (of existing teams) to accommodate,” Eala added.
However, the MVBA and NBC will not cease to exist. Eala said that they are allowed to put up separate pocket tournaments for the promotions and entertainment of their respective leagues.
THE MINDANAO-Visayas Basketball Association and the National Basketball Conference ended their bitter rivalry for dominance to pave the way for the creation of the Liga ng Pilipinas.
Former PBA commissioner Noli Eala is the brainchild behind the creation of the nationwide regional basketball league, which is aimed to discover new talents from the grassroots.
“The MVBA, NBC and Third Force had agreed to join forces to form a super regional league which we call Liga ng Pilipinas,” Eala told Cebu sports reporters yesterday.
MVBA founder Raul “Yayoy” Alcoseba and league chairman of the board Gov. Oscar Moreno, NBC secretary general Tito Palma and president Nathaniel “Tac” Padilla and Eala had already met twice and will finalize the agreement to launch the regional basketball tournament, patterned after the defunct Metropolitan Basketball
Association (MBA).
“The league is a community-based, community and LGU-supported amateur basketball league, just like the MBA, but not with the same budget. We keep the cost low to make the tournament viable, built from the ground not built from the stars like what MBA did,” Eala said.
There will be 16 teams participating in the league, which will have two conferences a year. Eight teams will be from the Luzon, four from the Visayas and four from Mindanao and the 16 will be divided into the North and South divisions.
The tournament will use the home-and-away format as the team vies for the division titles to determine who will play in the national championship.
“There are many teams wanting to join but we will be setting guidelines and criteria on which city to allow (to put up team). There will be merging (of existing teams) to accommodate,” Eala added.
However, the MVBA and NBC will not cease to exist. Eala said that they are allowed to put up separate pocket tournaments for the promotions and entertainment of their respective leagues.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Liga Pilipinas to be headed by Eala
Cebu Daily News
First Posted 12:16pm (Mla time) 10/19/2007
FORMER Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) commissioner Noli Eala will spearhead the creation of a community-based league named Liga Pilipinas.
Liga Pilipinas is a merger of the National Basketball Conference (NBC) and Mindanao Visayas Basketball Association (MVBA).
“This is a developmental league. We are building from the grassroots and we will give chance to those aspiring cagers to showcase their talents without playing in the big collegiate teams in Manila,” said Eala when interviewed in a national television yesterday.
Eala said it was BAP-SBP executive director Patrick Gregorio who came up with the idea of creating the league.
“Patrick is a good friend of mine and approached me and asked me to help them form the league,” said Eala, who resigned as PBA commissioner after he was disbarred by the Supreme Court due to “immorality”.
The respective leaders of NBC and MVBA have already agreed to merge in a meeting held early this week in Manila.
“Hopefully, we can have our opening early next year.” /CORRESPONDENT CALVIN D. CORDOVA
First Posted 12:16pm (Mla time) 10/19/2007
FORMER Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) commissioner Noli Eala will spearhead the creation of a community-based league named Liga Pilipinas.
Liga Pilipinas is a merger of the National Basketball Conference (NBC) and Mindanao Visayas Basketball Association (MVBA).
“This is a developmental league. We are building from the grassroots and we will give chance to those aspiring cagers to showcase their talents without playing in the big collegiate teams in Manila,” said Eala when interviewed in a national television yesterday.
Eala said it was BAP-SBP executive director Patrick Gregorio who came up with the idea of creating the league.
“Patrick is a good friend of mine and approached me and asked me to help them form the league,” said Eala, who resigned as PBA commissioner after he was disbarred by the Supreme Court due to “immorality”.
The respective leaders of NBC and MVBA have already agreed to merge in a meeting held early this week in Manila.
“Hopefully, we can have our opening early next year.” /CORRESPONDENT CALVIN D. CORDOVA
Thursday, October 18, 2007
After nightmare, Eala bounces back with new ‘Liga’
By Francis Ochoa | Inquirer
First Posted 05:40am (Mla time) 10/18/2007
MANILA, Philippines -- For more than a decade, he had been part of what he was currently watching on television one particular Sunday afternoon inside his den.
Understandably, the tuning-in did not come easy.
“Well, frankly, it was difficult to watch the [PBA] opening at home,” said former Philippine Basketball Association commissioner Noli Eala, in a chat with the Philippine Daily Inquirer Tuesday. “For the last 13 years, I’ve been part of the opening ceremonies as either a broadcaster or a commissioner.”
Getting up, in fact, from the nightmare that saw him lose the commissionership of the PBA after steering the league to newfound heights, was a lot easier.
“I had very good support from family and good friends,” said the 39-year-old former lawyer, in his first public interview since quitting the PBA after getting controversially disbarred by the Supreme Court on the grounds of immorality.
“Some people stood by me when the whole world seemed to have abandoned me, and that made it a lot easier,” he added. “I learned a lot of lessons in life.”
New lessons, old lessons. He hopes to parlay both into a second successful foray into basketball.
“My heart will always be in basketball,” he explained.
But for a while, it wasn’t quite so. Dressed in a light blue long-sleeved shirt and black pants for a press conference for the Liga Pilipinas, a regional basketball meet he hopes to guide through an expectedly turbulent infancy stage starting next year, Eala said he walled himself inside a shell, unreachable by anything basketball.
“I thought I should not be involved in basketball or any sport for that matter,” he said. Midway through August -- at about the time the PBA was scheduled to hold its rookie draft, it’s first official event post-Eala -- he left for Cebu to spend time with his family and tinker with the family business.
Basketball, though, refused to leave him alone.
Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas executive director Patrick Gregorio had this idea of putting up a solid regional basketball program that did not have to start from scratch. Aware that there were two existing leagues -- the Mindanao Visayas Basketball Association and the National Basketball Conference -- that preached regional basketball, Gregorio knew he had a backbone.
All he needed was someone to use that backbone and turn it into a truly national program, something like putting up a national broadband network without ZTE-like problems. He asked officials of the league, who happened to be in Cebu, to talk to a former basketball personality who happened to be there healing his wounds.
“It was not easy to say yes,” Eala said softly, almost inaudibly. “It took a couple of months before I agreed.”
“At the back of my mind, there was the fear that people would perceive this move as my way of sour-graping,” he explained. “But then, I told myself, ang importante, malinis ang kunsensiya and ang (what’s important is, the conscience and the) intentions, pure.”
So he said yes. Although his role in the league has yet to be defined -- NBC’s Tac Padilla, a legendary shooter and an Olympian, however referred to Eala as the league’s guiding force -- Eala said he wants to help in any way to get things going.
“I’ve mapped out a four-year growth chart,” he said. “I’m hoping by the second or third year, we will be on the go and by the fourth year, the trend will be irreversible.”
It is a familiar refrain. Eala’s legacy in the PBA will perhaps be instilling a marketing savvy never before experienced by the pro league. And his eyes, dull and pained at separate intervals during the afternoon chat, would brighten up when asked to talk about the growth of Liga Pilipinas.
“I’m looking at the Euro league as a model,” he said.
This was the commissioner in him talking already. Two days after watching the PBA opening from his television, he was ready to take on this latest challenge in his career.
“I think I’m at peace with what happened to me already,” Eala said. “Regardless of what people think, this is not just me trying to prove that I deserve to be the PBA commissioner. This is not me sour-graping. I’ve never said anything bad about the PBA regardless of what happened.”
“This is simply me, moving on and refusing to let down the people who depend on me and have faith in me.”
Watching the PBA opening was hard. Dealing with the memories was difficult too. But moving on with a life that still holds a lot of promise? It was as simple as getting up from his cozy chair one Sunday afternoon and turning the television off.
First Posted 05:40am (Mla time) 10/18/2007
MANILA, Philippines -- For more than a decade, he had been part of what he was currently watching on television one particular Sunday afternoon inside his den.
Understandably, the tuning-in did not come easy.
“Well, frankly, it was difficult to watch the [PBA] opening at home,” said former Philippine Basketball Association commissioner Noli Eala, in a chat with the Philippine Daily Inquirer Tuesday. “For the last 13 years, I’ve been part of the opening ceremonies as either a broadcaster or a commissioner.”
Getting up, in fact, from the nightmare that saw him lose the commissionership of the PBA after steering the league to newfound heights, was a lot easier.
“I had very good support from family and good friends,” said the 39-year-old former lawyer, in his first public interview since quitting the PBA after getting controversially disbarred by the Supreme Court on the grounds of immorality.
“Some people stood by me when the whole world seemed to have abandoned me, and that made it a lot easier,” he added. “I learned a lot of lessons in life.”
New lessons, old lessons. He hopes to parlay both into a second successful foray into basketball.
“My heart will always be in basketball,” he explained.
But for a while, it wasn’t quite so. Dressed in a light blue long-sleeved shirt and black pants for a press conference for the Liga Pilipinas, a regional basketball meet he hopes to guide through an expectedly turbulent infancy stage starting next year, Eala said he walled himself inside a shell, unreachable by anything basketball.
“I thought I should not be involved in basketball or any sport for that matter,” he said. Midway through August -- at about the time the PBA was scheduled to hold its rookie draft, it’s first official event post-Eala -- he left for Cebu to spend time with his family and tinker with the family business.
Basketball, though, refused to leave him alone.
Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas executive director Patrick Gregorio had this idea of putting up a solid regional basketball program that did not have to start from scratch. Aware that there were two existing leagues -- the Mindanao Visayas Basketball Association and the National Basketball Conference -- that preached regional basketball, Gregorio knew he had a backbone.
All he needed was someone to use that backbone and turn it into a truly national program, something like putting up a national broadband network without ZTE-like problems. He asked officials of the league, who happened to be in Cebu, to talk to a former basketball personality who happened to be there healing his wounds.
“It was not easy to say yes,” Eala said softly, almost inaudibly. “It took a couple of months before I agreed.”
“At the back of my mind, there was the fear that people would perceive this move as my way of sour-graping,” he explained. “But then, I told myself, ang importante, malinis ang kunsensiya and ang (what’s important is, the conscience and the) intentions, pure.”
So he said yes. Although his role in the league has yet to be defined -- NBC’s Tac Padilla, a legendary shooter and an Olympian, however referred to Eala as the league’s guiding force -- Eala said he wants to help in any way to get things going.
“I’ve mapped out a four-year growth chart,” he said. “I’m hoping by the second or third year, we will be on the go and by the fourth year, the trend will be irreversible.”
It is a familiar refrain. Eala’s legacy in the PBA will perhaps be instilling a marketing savvy never before experienced by the pro league. And his eyes, dull and pained at separate intervals during the afternoon chat, would brighten up when asked to talk about the growth of Liga Pilipinas.
“I’m looking at the Euro league as a model,” he said.
This was the commissioner in him talking already. Two days after watching the PBA opening from his television, he was ready to take on this latest challenge in his career.
“I think I’m at peace with what happened to me already,” Eala said. “Regardless of what people think, this is not just me trying to prove that I deserve to be the PBA commissioner. This is not me sour-graping. I’ve never said anything bad about the PBA regardless of what happened.”
“This is simply me, moving on and refusing to let down the people who depend on me and have faith in me.”
Watching the PBA opening was hard. Dealing with the memories was difficult too. But moving on with a life that still holds a lot of promise? It was as simple as getting up from his cozy chair one Sunday afternoon and turning the television off.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Liga Pilipinas merges 2 regional cage tourneys
Eala resurfaces
By Francis Ochoa | Inquirer
First Posted 03:07am (Mla time) 10/17/2007
MANILA, Philippines -- A new basketball league, one which casts a bright eye at the future and a wary one at the past, was born Tuesday following the announcement that two regional basketball tournaments have decided to merge.
It will be called Liga Pilipinas.
And at the forefront of the merger is a basketball personality who knows a thing or two about running a league and unifying two separate entities.
“Liga Pilipinas will be the new face of the effort to unify regional basketball in the country,” said Noli Eala, former Philippine Basketball Association commissioner and one of the key personalities behind the merger of the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas and the Basketball Association of the Philippines.
The league will be formed on a merger between the Mindanao Visayas Basketball Association (MVBA) and the National Basketball Conference (NBC). The two leagues have agreed to work toward a goal that will actually call for the dissolution of their tournaments.
“There’s no use really having two separate leagues to operate under a similar purpose,” said Olympian Nathaniel “Tac” Padilla.
Also present during the launch were Yayoy Alcoseba and Willie Generalao, who represented the MVBA, Tagaytay Mayor Bambol Tolentino and Tito Palma of the NBC, Misamis Oriental Gov. Oscar Moreno and Andrew Te, part of the organizing group.
The idea of a regional basketball tournament was first put to test by the Metropolitan Basketball Association in 1998. But the MBA crumbled five years later under the weight of excessive spending.
“We do not want to be hounded by mistakes of the past,” Eala said. “We do not want to commit the same follies.”
Although the league will start in the first quarter next year, several principles have already been agreed upon, among which is to curb expenditures.
Eala said a team in the new league will cost less than maintaining a Philippine Basketball League squad. In fact, running the league will cost less than half of what it takes to maintain a PBA squad for a year.
“I see it working on an annual budget of P10 to 12 million,” Eala said. “But I always try to find ways to cut costs so there’s a chance we can really, really go lower than that.”
By Francis Ochoa | Inquirer
First Posted 03:07am (Mla time) 10/17/2007
MANILA, Philippines -- A new basketball league, one which casts a bright eye at the future and a wary one at the past, was born Tuesday following the announcement that two regional basketball tournaments have decided to merge.
It will be called Liga Pilipinas.
And at the forefront of the merger is a basketball personality who knows a thing or two about running a league and unifying two separate entities.
“Liga Pilipinas will be the new face of the effort to unify regional basketball in the country,” said Noli Eala, former Philippine Basketball Association commissioner and one of the key personalities behind the merger of the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas and the Basketball Association of the Philippines.
The league will be formed on a merger between the Mindanao Visayas Basketball Association (MVBA) and the National Basketball Conference (NBC). The two leagues have agreed to work toward a goal that will actually call for the dissolution of their tournaments.
“There’s no use really having two separate leagues to operate under a similar purpose,” said Olympian Nathaniel “Tac” Padilla.
Also present during the launch were Yayoy Alcoseba and Willie Generalao, who represented the MVBA, Tagaytay Mayor Bambol Tolentino and Tito Palma of the NBC, Misamis Oriental Gov. Oscar Moreno and Andrew Te, part of the organizing group.
The idea of a regional basketball tournament was first put to test by the Metropolitan Basketball Association in 1998. But the MBA crumbled five years later under the weight of excessive spending.
“We do not want to be hounded by mistakes of the past,” Eala said. “We do not want to commit the same follies.”
Although the league will start in the first quarter next year, several principles have already been agreed upon, among which is to curb expenditures.
Eala said a team in the new league will cost less than maintaining a Philippine Basketball League squad. In fact, running the league will cost less than half of what it takes to maintain a PBA squad for a year.
“I see it working on an annual budget of P10 to 12 million,” Eala said. “But I always try to find ways to cut costs so there’s a chance we can really, really go lower than that.”
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)