USBL Trying to Salvage League
The United States Basketball League is a summer league that has suspended operations for the past 2008 summer season. It was a great league for players coming back from Europe or playing after their winter season ended. The USBL had a draft and they were a pretty legit league. Over the past few years basketball has changed. Several leagues have folded and even the longtime NBA feeder in the CBA was run into the ground. The CBA still exists today but is a shell of its former self. Hopefully they merge with the PBL so their history continues. Ideally if they merge their season could begin in December instead of November or January as is the current case of the two leagues.
The USBL only lists 5 teams on their website, and one of those teams has already came out and said they no longer wish to continue to own the franchise. That means the league has 4 teams at best but after missing a year of play that is just a guess. Why is the USBL failing and the IBL flurishing? One major problem for the USBL is overall yearly expenses per team. Basically, the IBL teams have figured out how to operate at a much lesser expense. This is credited to the Commissioner’s one flight guarantee and cluster setup. For a expansion team to buy into the league it would cost them (or us) $100,000 just in intial league fees. With the IBL around nobody is going to pay that. The USBL might still have a few teams in Kansas and Oklahoma that might make a great cluster someday. Maybe they should consider expanding in the IBL.
The USBL is taking a page out of our book in trying to create a pipeline of players from outside the USA to their league. Below I will post an article that explains why they are scouting in Korea. I’ve been trying to get our scouting video collection started so that we might start scouting prospects from Europe. Asia and South America are basketball hotbeds that we should look into as well in the future. With all the league fees I’m not sure how a USBL team could afford to fly a player over and provide housing as well. The IBL teams with a strong budget could do this, but that is only because of a solid fanbase and low expenses.
I will focus exactly on how we can create a pipeline from Europe (and South American/Asia) to our IBL team and possible future teams in a post soon to come. For our first year in operation we likely will be counting on quality game tape to scout the various leagues, but in future years we could possibly send someone out to scout the players we are interested in. The USBL actually hired a scout to spend the entire winter season scouting the Korean Basketball League. No offense, but that doesn’t sound very efficient. At OMT, we’ve got a lot of leagues to watch as April will roll around in no time.
Click here to read about the USBL’s scouting in South Korea.
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