The South Korean basketball league (KBL) is an interesting one. Much like the Chinese Basketball Association, it is interesting for three main reasons; 1) It’s full of import players that you’ve heard of, 2) The domestic players’ talent level is pretty bad, 3) The import players’ talent level is pretty good. This leads to huge statistics from players that you’ve heard of. And that can never be bad. The KBL employs a draft process for its import players that is better described here. Also at that link is the list of 165 players who registered for the KBL’s draft pool; it is from that list that the drafted players were chosen. That listed was whittled down from 224 to 165, and it is reproduced below for no real reason. 1 1 Alfred Aboya 85.01.02 UCLA 2 6 Jeff Adrien 86.02.10 Connecticut 3 7 Uka Agbai 81.05.07 Boston College 4 8 Dokun Akingbade 84.06.05 George Washington 5 15 Ramel Allen 79.06.05 Bridgeport 6 19 Serge Angounou 83.09.01 Arizona 7 24 Julius Ashby 82.09.16 Univ. of Colorado 8 30 Kyle Austin 88.10.18 UC Riverside 9 35 Alpha Bangura 80.02.04 St Johns Univ. 10 39 Ousmane Barro 84.12.07 Marquette 11 41 Nashid Beard 83.02.16 Lamar 12 43 Romel Beck 82.05.29 UNLV 13 46 Rashad Bell 82.09.23 Boston 14 48 Rodrigue Benson 84.10.10 Cal State-Berkeley 15 54 Odartey Blankson 82.03.12 UNLV 16 62 Drelke Bouldin 80.07.08 Fresno State NCAA 17 63 Ruben Boumtje 78.05.20 Georgetown 18 68 Torraye Braggs 76.03.15 Xavier 19 69 Micah Brand 80.10.18 Massachusetts 20 70 Craig Bradshaw 83.07.28 Winthrop 21 86 Robert Brown 80.02.17 Buffalo 22 88 Keith Brumbaugh 85.09.29 Hillsbrough JC 23 89 John Bryant 87.06.13 Santa Clara 24 111 Dennis Carr 81.01.27 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Univ. 25 117 Marquin Chandler 82.03.11 San Jose St.Univ. 26 123 Ivory Clark 85.06.01 […]
The South Korean basketball league [KBL] is a relatively new league, only thirteen years in existence, that unashamedly focuses on Korean national players. Part of that means heavily restricting the amount of imports that so heavily permeate all the other leagues around the world. Teams are allowed only two imports, and unlike in some other countries, dual citizenship is very hard to come by. It also has some quirky rules. Each team is allowed two foreign players, but in the second and third quarter of all games, only one import is allowed to play at any one time. Additionally, a few years ago, the KBL had a rule that barred any players standing 6’8 and above. What the intended purpose of that was, I don’t know, but presumably they quickly figured out how damaging that rule was to their basketball product, because they have now done away with it. Now, tall foreign dudes are allowed, and they’re kind of prevalent. A combination of that, and the 54-game schedules that teams play, make the KBL highly intriguing to the hardened nerds amongst us. Every summer, the KBL holds a draft of foreign players who want to play in their league that year. The players that are drafted are mostly tall guys, as Korea doesn’t produce much talented size of their own. (Ha Seung-Jin excepted.) The criteria for entry in the draft, though, is pretty weird. Players pay a $100 fee to be entered into the pre-draft list camp, and that list of players is culled down to a manageable amount of invitees by the KBL. The surviving list then go through one more cull, and the surviving few proceed (if they still want to) to the KBL pre-draft camp, which takes place in Las Vegas. And from there, the draft choices […]
The South Korean basketball league [KBL] has some quirky rules. It’s a relatively new league, only ten years in existence, that unashamedly focuses on Korean national players. Part of that means heavily restricting the amount of Big Foreign Americans™ that so heavily permeate all the other leagues around the world. A few years ago, the KBL had a rule that barred any players standing 6’8 and above. What the intended purpose of that was, I don’t know, but presumably they quickly figured out how damaging that rule was to their basketball product, because they have now done away with it. Now, tall foreign dudes are allowed. And they’re prevalent. Every summer, the KBL holds a draft of foreign players who want to play in their league that year. The players that are drafted are mostly tall guys, as apparently Korea doesn’t produce much talented size of their own. (Ha Seung-Jin excepted, of course.) The criteria for entry in the draft, though, is pretty weird. The following is looted without permission from the Korean Basketball League website: [The] Korean Basketball League (KBL) Pre-Draft Tryout Camp for Foreign Players will be held from July 22nd (Wed) to 24th (Fri), 2009 at Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, NV, U.S.A. The players who are interested in playing in Korea for the 2009~2010 season, which will start from the middle of October 2009 to the end of April 2010, and meet the qualifications below are asked to fill out the application form and send via a fax or by e-mail the required documents to KBL office by May 22nd, 2009. A: Qualifications: 1. Must have at least a high school diploma 2. Must be at least 18 years of age 3. Have not had a contract with teams in Europe Division I (Spain, […]
