Inter-association B/ball tourney benched

A decision has been taken by the Guyana Amateur Basketball Federation (GABF) to allow the Next Level Entertainment (NLE) nationwide first division basketball tournament to commence ahead of the GABF inter-association tournament.

A GABF official informed Stabroek Sport yesterday that the NLE tournament would start as scheduled while the GABF tournament will be pushed back to a date that will be announced later.

The NLE tournament scheduled to commence on Friday would have clashed with the GABF tournament originally scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. But the problem has been resolved and the NLE tournament will commence as scheduled.

President of the Georgetown Amateur Basketball Association (GABA), Chris Bowman confirmed yesterday that the GABF tournament would take the back seat and allow the NLE tournament to drive on.

“The tournament will be played after NLE,” Bowman said, adding that the Georgetown association will identify players and coaches for the GABA team.

He said that the association is not ready to release more details about the tournament. According to Bowman, an official media briefing will be held on the details of the GABF tournament.

The GABF official said that the NLE tournament will give the federation a better opportunity to spot players for the inter- association tournament and by extension, the national men’s team.

The federation had announced last week that its intent in staging the inter-association tournament was to select a national team for the upcoming Caribbean Basketball Confederation (CBC) 2007 championships in Puerto Rico.

The deadline for submission of teams to the CBC headquarters is March 1. The NLE tournament concludes on February 25. The federation will be left with six days to submit a team to CBC if it is serious about playing in the regional tournament.

There is no time left after the NLE tournament to stage an inter-association competition to select players for the national team.

The decision to postpone the inter-association tournament places the NLE tournament at the base of national selection.

Executive of the promotion group NLE, Yannick Charles told Stabroek Sport yesterday that the federation is not communicating with the group. Charles said that NLE was oblivious to the federation’s intention to stage an inter-association tournament.

“We wrote the federation telling them about our tournament and providing the dates – they never told us that they were doing any tournament but we told them that we were staging our tournament in collaboration with the associations,” Charles said.

The NLE tournament was undoubtedly the biggest basketball tournament held last year and promised to be bigger this year. The first place team will get $250,000 while second and third will take home $100,000 and $50,000 respectively.

Individual prizes for the Most Valuable Player (MVP), Best Defensive Player and Best Shooter are up for grabs.

On the other hand players will also be looking to impress the local selectors throughout the nationwide first division tournament for a chance to represent Guyana at the CBC championships.