Reader Review: The best of ABL regular season by Jonathan Chuongco
Contributed by reader Jonathan Chuongco
With the ASEAN Basketball League (ABL) finals days away, Red Hoops reader Jonathan Chuongco gives his review of those who have stood out for him during the regular ABL season.
Best Player of the Regular Season: Nakiea Miller
It took Satria Muda plenty of persuasion to have Nakiea Miller on board their team and he has lived up to their expectations since joining the team. (Photo 1 © Red Hoops file photo)
Brought in to replace the ineffective Theophilus Little, Satria Muda have chosen the right guy. Not only can Miller score, but he can crash the boards as well, averaging a monstrous 20.7 points a game and 16.4 boards. Where Miller goes, Satria Muda go as well.
Most surprising win of the Regular Season: Thailand Tigers at Singapore Slingers (Dec 7)
Thailand Tigers capitalised on the Slingers’ mid-season slump to steal an away victory. It was the Tigers only away win during the season. (Photo 2 © Red Hoops file photo)
The win was surprising because the Slingers were leading the ABL standings at the time, while the Tigers were anchored at the bottom. The Slingers actually held the lead at the end of the first quarter but things turned around during the second and the Tigers never looked back, getting the most surprising win of the ABL season.
Best Comeback of the Regular Season: KL Dragons
The Dragons celebrate after their win over Slingers in Singapore. The KL Dragons was the only team with a winning head-to-head record over the Slingers (2-1) during the regular season. (Photo 3 © Red Hoops file photo)
Hats off to the KL Dragons for not giving up and winning three straight crucial games against the Philippine Patriots, Singapore Slingers and Satria Muda BritAma, the top three teams in the ABL. Because of that, lady luck rewarded the Dragons, and they took the final playoff spot at the expense of the Brunei Barracudas.
Best Defensive Team of the Regular Season: Philippine Patriots
Philippine Patriots’ Rob Wainwright keeps the ball in his team’s possession. (Photo 4 © Red Hoops file photo)
The Patriots held their opponents to 68.2 PPG (points per game) and held opponents to 37.6% shooting and 28.7% 3-point shooting to rank 1st, 1st and 2nd respectively in the three categories. It is a no-brainer that the best defensive team award should be given to the Patriots for it is a big reason why they led the ABL in the regular season.
Best Offensive Team/s of the Regular Season: Singapore Slingers and Brunei Barracudas
Singapore Slingers beat Brunei Barracudas three times during the regular season, once at home and twice away. (Photo 5 © Red Hoops file photo)
These two teams are very efficient at scoring. The Brunei Barracudas led the league in terms of scoring production with 78.9 PPG compared to the 75.5 PPG of the Slingers, but the Slingers shot slightly better than the ‘Cudas with 43.5% to 42.4%.
Only these two teams shot better than 40% for the season, and since their offensive production are very similar, both teams deserve to be given the best offensive team awards.
Best Crowd Support: KL Dragons fans
The KL Dragons’ fans traveled to Singapore to back their team up. (Photo 6 © Red Hoops file photo)
They were rowdy, loud and proud and filled the MABA Stadium when the Dragons played. No questions asked, the Dragons fans are the best in the ABL right now in terms of supporting the home team.
Editor’s Note: Have an entirely different opinion? If you would also like to share your review with the other Red Hoops readers, send your story to jan@redhoops.com
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ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Best Player of Eliminations:
Jason Dixon-Patriots (LU Flames all time best rebounders)
Most surprising win of Eliminations:
KL Dragons beat Patriots
Best comeback from Eliminations
Barracudas. (If Patriots did not lose to KL Dragons, perhaps it should be Patriots vs Baracudas)
Best Defensive team of Eliminations:
Patriots
Best Offensive team of Eliminations:
Patriots
Best Import
J.Dixon / Freeman (Finals).. C.Brigz, R.Larry (regular season)
Best supportive fans:
1.SM Britama
2.Slingers
3.KL Dragons
4.Brunei Barracudas
5.Thailand Tigers
5.Philippine patriots
I substituted the word “Eliminations” with “Regular Season” cos we’ve been using the term “regular season” throughout the ABL. Sorry for the confusion. : )
Just a thought
If the ABL is similar to the Kanagawa Prefecture in Slam Dunk, these would be the Comparisons:
Shohoku: Patriots
Ryonan: Slingers
Kainan: Satria Muda
Tsukubu: Dragons
Takezato: Tigers
Ryukufu: Barracudas
Other Prefectures:
Aiwa: Ginebra
Sannoh: Gilas
Toyotama: Talk n Text
@Les, I think it’s ok to replace eliminations with regular season. Like you said, it’s the term being used in the ABL. The term eliminations is a commonly used word in Philippine basketball. The term regular season is a rarely used term (if not never).
Im not sure if Friday game will be air over ESPN, as i only saw Slingers vs SMB games keep on replaying!?
@nards… yeah gillas would be sannoh. but who would be sendoh, rukawa, sakuragi, maki and the rest of the crowd…lol
@Irangels – still scratching my head about which term to use but regular season seem to make the more sense to me. How about preliminary rounds?
Why is it called the elimination in PBA?
By the way, what does the NBA call their regular season 82-game schedule? The regular season?
@Jake well, its just a thought when I finished the manga a year ago, I tried to compare the ABL and the PBA as separate prefectures in the Slam Dunk manga and a bit of Dear Boys considering Brunei having 5 players with ZERO bench inputs, so here we are:
the ABL and Slam Dunk Counterparts
KANAGAWA Prefecture(ABL)
Sendoh: Ng
Rukawa: Freeman
Mitsui: Wainwright or Acuna
Maki: Hartman
Jin: Amin Prihantono/Faisal Julius
Sakuragi: Gaco or Baclao… LOL
Akagi: Dixon
Miyagi: Ybanez
Kogure: Alcaraz
Uozumi: Jeffers
Mike Okita: Reggie Larry
Godai: Rudy and Batumalai
Other Prefectures (PBA and Others):
“Ace Killer” Minami: Ranidel de Ocampo
Eiji Sawakita: Mac Baracael
Kazunari Fukatsu: Chris Tiu
@Hanoi-Dalat
on the Best Player of the Eliminations, Dixon is consistent for the Patriots, but Nakiea Miller’s numbers in the ABL are monstrous right now, and when he is fired up, BritAma is a tough team to beat, as shown in the semi-finals against the Slingers.
the KL Dragons trashing the Patriots was a surprising win too, and a close-second to my list.
Regarding the Best Offensive Production, the Patriots are not really as efficient in scoring compared to the Barracudas and the Slingers, but there is no doubt they are the Best Defensive Team in the League.
On the best comeback, unfortunately the Barracudas lost steam at the end of the Eliminations, whereas the Dragons defeated the top 3 teams in the ABL consecutively, in which no other team was able to do.
On the Crowd Support, I have BritAma on a close second on the list, its just that I see the Dragons crowd more rowdy and more active than the BritAma crowd.
@les. I think it’s just a matter of preference or culture.
The PBA and most leagues in the Philippines use the term eliminations because teams play against each other twice, and the best 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 teams (depending on the league format) moves on to the next round. Of course, the worst teams goes home, or should I say “eliminated.” Thus, calling the first phase of the tournament as the “elimination round.”
As for the NBA, my best guess is because of their long season. Each team plays 82 games, which stretches from late October to early April, and they also crown champions in their respective divisions based on their standings.
The NBA playoffs is placed in a tournament format (as what they call it here in the US) much like similar with the NCAA tournament on March. This is were the tree division champions from each conference gets an automatic slot, with the other five teams earning their place because of their overall record in their respective conference. Very similar to the ABL playoffs where teams are bracketed based on their performance in their standings.
As the ABL evolve and more teams expressed their interest to join the league, it is pretty academic that the league will separate teams into divisions or conferences. How the league would do this? We just have to wait and see on how things would pan out in the upcoming years.
Not much difference between Miller and slingers fans..
Patriots best offensive team,else they will not landed in 1st spot. (final scores each games)
In Singapore stadium, i seen more indo fans (3 different games).
very few cheering KL dragons, just only in MABA stadium that they are solid..
Carmelo Garica 6’11 is yet to discover..
Rabel al Huseini
Sam Ekwe
haha ok that’s the way you see it then, but my point still stands. The Patriots are leading the ABL because of their stingy defense and decent offense.
Carmelo garica pure filipino,should be in for patriots.
@hanoi : i agreed that u put SM fans best supportive, and i’m a bit confused why empty venue like dragons’s got best crowd by chuongco…and Y’all know BritAma Arena always haunted every opponent of SM coz of the crowd and the arena always full when SM play at homecourt.
@SatriaJakarta: The two times I visited Jakarta to watch the Slingers play SM, there was no full arena. I don’t know what you are talking about!
@SatriaJakarta
empty venue at MABA Stadium? The Dragons fans showed up there, with the drums, the energy and the support for their home team. I know SatriaMuda fans are supportive too, but to say empty venue for the KL Dragons? I think that’s way overstating it.
I sat beside SMB fans all times when they played here in SIS.
KL Dragons fans would travel all the way from KL to Singapore if both KL Dragons and Singapore Slinger are in the finals. Too bad they aren’t lol.
KL dragons travel all the way to SG,because bus is provided (6hrs travel),but not enough compare to SMB fans here in SIS..
Very poor first season, theres no all star weekends (slumdunk,3pts,coast to coast contest), for fans to SEE who is best individual talents!
so what if they provided bus? do you think its easy to find, get, and gather people in such a short notice? and you said it yourself, we had to travel in a BUS for six hours.
now tell me, can the patriots pull off a full house crowd even when the entrance is free? well they better should for the finals.
of course its not that hard to get loud and noisy when your team is leading. try to be a fan of an inconsistent team that got dunked, trashed, and choked in their own backyard several times.
SMB fans are thrashed by slingers with 30 pts. on their first ever encounter,yet they are still noisy, expats (prof,students,tourist etc).Indons fans always dominate the crowd in SIS, more than dragons,patriots,tigers fans, aside from their home court.
I have a feeling that the stadium at Ynares for games one and two won’t be filled up by Filipino fans because the ABL Finals is on a collision course with the PBA playoffs. The playoffs features the top two most popular teams in the PBA — Barangay Ginebra Kings (versus Alaska) and San Miguel Beermen (versus Purefoods).
Despite that, I think this is also good to know how much fan base the ABL has in Manila.
UAAP folks and fans will fill up the stadium lucky guess
but I bet the Talk n Text and Smart will show up and watch. coz they’re pretty pissed off by what happened in the PBA…
Again ABL had poor marketing here,they should adjust the schedule when PBA had no play.
If 10 percent of Indonesians or Malaysians become avid fans of ABL, there’s a big chance of success. How big is the population of the 2. Should be at least 200 million, right? So it translate to about 10 million.
If they have this population to advertise products to (like putting other company’s names on their shirts – just like what they have on F1 Cars and other commercial leagues in the world) – then this league can survive even without a Philippine franchise. They can do with Asean imports .
I like to see SMB win against the Patriots. It might generate more fan support. If ABL becomes more successful (tv market), then perhaps people like MVP, Gokongwei will really be enticed to join the league.
mart does see the big picture of the league
Sorry, I meant 20 Million not 10 million (10 percent of 200 Million).
Just got this article from the PBA forum. Enjoy!
Vietnam to join Asean Basketball League – Feb 11, 2010 (by Hector Santos)
Clamor for a Vietnamese basketball team to join the 2nd edition of Asean Basketball League (ABL) became clearer as Erick Thohir, president of Southeast Asia Basketball Association, is expecting that 3 new teams will join the league next season. One each from the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam.
The ABL is a men’s professional basketball league in Southeast Asia that began in October 2009. It comprises six clubs from the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam and Singapore.
As of date, it’s not yet clear who will sponsor the Vietnamese basketball team but many basketball fans from Vietnam are now excited due to this development.
Vietnam, where soccer is the no.1 sport, always tap Filipino coaches like Ricky Magallanes and Erik Samson to handle its national basketball team.
Vietnam may tap anew another Filipino coach to carry the fight in ABL.
Aside from getting basketball local talent to compete, Vietnam may also import Filipino players to fortify their line up and follow what Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore had done to streghten their teams in ABL.
They may also get players with Vietnamese lineage who are making names outside Vietnam like Minh-Duc Truong who is currently playing in Germany, NCAA’s University of Hawaii standout Bryan Ngo, Toan Nguyen (G) who is playing well in Norway’s BLNO squad Froya Ambassadors, Thanh Nguyen who played for the Stirling Senators in an Australian Leage, and so many others.
bryan ngo is a verified half vietnamese half filipino.
Economic crisis makes difficult to convince Vietnamese to join intl basketball competitions. The vietnamese womens basketball national team have more accomplishment.
lrangels: how about the other two teams from Philippines and Indonesia? any news on them?
@Starkiller. I don’t know yet. As soon as I find out, learn, read, or hear something, I will definitely pass them to you.
I just read an article that ABL prefer to get new team like vietnam,instead of getting 2nd team from Philipines or indonesia.
more teams presented, the longer games are host, more cost,more expensive for the league.
If teams are gonna play each other at least twice on one’s home court, they should play them on consecutive days. So that they won’t have to spend for another trip back on that city.
Same as Major League Baseball. Teams play 3 to 4 games on one’s home field on consecutive days.
The only concern is fans may not want to see the same opponent twice in such a short time. But if the quality play is great this won’t be an issue.
@mart. I remember you asked on one thread that you’re asking an article regarding a team from Vietnam exploring the waters of the ABL. I hope you were able to read the article I posted above (dated: February 12).
As far as who will own it? Or, who are the players will be playing? It’s still remains to be seen. What Hanoi and I were talking on the other thread are mere possibilities, or speculations — take your pick. Just for the purpose of having a topic to talk about.