The 2010 Puerto Rican BSN Season

June 7th, 2010

The Chinese Basketball Association is an area of particular focus on this website, because it’s fun. Every season, the CBA plays host to many former NBA players, and plays them for the vast majority of their 48-minute games, resulting in huge statistics and thereby being more fun over leagues such as Italy’s Serie A, where teams employ 11-man rotations, nobody plays more than 25mpg, and everyone averages about 9/4. They are better standards of league for this reason, but they’re just not as fun as the CBA. In the CBA, imports rule. The Baloncesto Superior Nacional, Puerto Rico’s premier basketball league, is much the same. The games are 40 minutes, and the season is shorter, but the import talent is highly comparable (often identical), and the homegrown talent is vastly superior. Puerto Rico has a strong basketball pedigree, and a history of turning out high-calibre international players. Those players are mostly guards, which is why I think a merger with Senegal, which exclusively produces quality big men, would change the international basketball game beyond all recognition. Nonetheless, there’s always ability coming out of there, and also some NBA-calibre talent. Puerto Rican players in the NBA right now include Carlos Arroyo, Jose Barea and Carmelo Anthony. And Carmelo’s backup, Renaldo Balkman, might soon be joining that list. Apart from those select few, almost all of the good Puerto Rican players play in the Puerto Rican BSN. Even if they’ve been playing in other leagues, players generally go to play in the BSN once those other commitments have been fulfilled. NBA players do not go, of course, but the Puerto Rican players dotted around the clubs of the world usually return for some hot BSN action, bringing with them many of the ex-NBA imports that had previously been partaking in the CBA. […]