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the IBA is a real solid league, with a real good Owner/President in Barry Bradford. this team has good players, the teams play all of their games, and they have owners that all work together.

Sounds like this league is heading in the right direction. Our young players need a league with integrity. It appears the IBA has it. Congrats to Mr. Bradford and his staff. I hope before too long OSC will note this league.

We're over four years into the Great Recession. Maybe in another five or six years the economy will recover enough that professional venues will be available, fans will have money, and the IBA can actually be considered a solid professional league. The current IBA is far from being a professional basketball league, IMO.

What do you see them needing to become a solid league?

The IBA needs deeper pockets. They need to spend money promoting before they can be called a true professional league, IMO. Before that can happen, potential fans and sponsors have to feel better about spending money on entertainment.

Here in Northwest Indiana, a few restaurants that closed around 2008 during the darkest days of the great recession are re-opening. That's a good sign of economic recovery, but it can also be because of the recent influx of people moving to Northwest Indiana. These people can no longer afford to live in Chicago and the rest of Cook county, Illinois.

Meanwhile, the IBL stumbles along in a more regional format (while still trying to find expansion that sticks) and ends up with 5 "branding teams" and 5 regular teams, this year. Still trying to plod along and live the dream.

http://www.ibl.com/standings.php

I probably wouldn't even have broached the subject, except I ended up in a conversation after yesterday's Timbers match, talking about how the US Basketball Academy (located well east of Eugene in the forest of the Cascade foothills) is the reason the Japanese team even exists. They haven't lacked for good coaches (usually the mis-castoffs from U of Oregon)... curious little breeding ground for the international game more than for Americans.

So the IBL announced a "partnership" with the West Coast Pro Basketball League. Both websites show the identical schedule for the spring. It's the standings page for this year that tells the story:

http://www.westcoastprobasketball.com/standings.php

So 6 WCBL teams will be the "Winter Conference." There are 3 full IBL teams left, and 6 "branding teams" are in the mix (never mind other "branding teams" listed on the website and nowhere near the schedule). Talk about straggling along hoping to catch a break... and yet I might give them kudos for being almost completely honest with the "branding teams" shtick.

So when Terry Emmert decides he needs to put more energy into the AFL Thunder, will that put a nail in the coffin once and for all? Somehow probably not, but this league only seems to exist anymore to amuse me. Annually. Which is to say 5 minutes a year.

[quote=""Pounder""]So the IBL announced a "partnership" with the West Coast Pro Basketball League. Both websites show the identical schedule for the spring. It's the standings page for this year that tells the story:

http://www.westcoastprobasketball.com/standings.php

So 6 WCBL teams will be the "Winter Conference." There are 3 full IBL teams left, and 6 "branding teams" are in the mix (never mind other "branding teams" listed on the website and nowhere near the schedule). Talk about straggling along hoping to catch a break... and yet I might give them kudos for being almost completely honest with the "branding teams" shtick.

So when Terry Emmert decides he needs to put more energy into the AFL Thunder, will that put a nail in the coffin once and for all? Somehow probably not, but this league only seems to exist anymore to amuse me. Annually. Which is to say 5 minutes a year.[/quote]

It is too bad the IBL is on life support, for a moment a few years ago it looked like it could be a good thing for summer basketball. But sadly, I think the nail in the coffin was Edmonton Energy owner David Dorward being elected to the Alberta Legislature. That killed the Energy and lost any momentum they had in expanding in Canada. As I recall, there were groups interested in Calgary, Saskatoon and either Lethbridge or Medicine Hat (I forget which), but without Edmonton in the mix these all disappeared.