The Federation of Uganda Basketball Associations (FUBA) has zeroed on three options regarding the 2020 National Basketball League season.
The basketball leagues had been scheduled to start on the weekend of March 20-22 but following the suspension of all sporting activities by the government for a month the federation put on hold the start of the season.
With the government extending the lock by an extra couple of weeks, FUBA has settled on three options on how they will go about the 2020 season.
“Following the Presidential address of May 4th 2020 and the new guidelines/directives
issued by the President, it appears that we shall not be able to start our calendar activities
soon as earlier on anticipated,” a statement from FUBA reads in part.
“This is to, therefore, inform you that depending on the new directives issued at the end of
the 14 days lockdown extension, we are considering the following options;
- We shall definitely have to suspend some calendar activities, as they will be
overtaken by events. - For the National Basketball League – NBL (Men and Women), we have a number
options as follows;
(a) To play a one leg/round league where the top 4 teams in each division qualify
for the semi-finals,
(b) A Tournament based competition where we have teams grouped in different
divisions, and then the top four teams qualify for the semi-finals.
(c) If time doesn’t allow us to have the above two options by end of October 2020,
then we shall be left with no option but to cancel the league. However, we shall
either have a knockout tournament, which includes all teams from the different
divisions, or short 3×3 tournaments to engage our players and fans with some
basketball activity for the year 2020.
The Lower Divisions (Division II and Division I) will also follow the same format as the National Basketball League depending on the guidelines that will be issued by the government after the fourteen days.
However, the FIBA Activities as Zone V Club Championship, Basketball Africa League Qualifiers, 3×3 Africa Cup, AfroBasket 2021 Qualifiers that are scheduled for October and beyond remain unchanged unless communicated by FIBA and NBA Africa.