Impact Basketball Competitive Training Series to start on September 12 in Las Vegas – NBA News
The long-time trainer of the National Basketball Association players Joe Abunassar has arranged a two weeks intense contest that will take place in Los Vegas from September 12 during this lockout.
The tournament is called Impact Basketball Competitive Training Series and it will take place two miles away from the strip of the Los Vegas at Impact Basketball gymnasium. However, due to the timing of the high profile league,
many people have branded it as the “Lockout League”.
With this effort Abunassar is looking to counter the dearth of competitive game and lack of physical training, as NBA players are not allowed to use the franchise facilities during the lockout.
In a telephonic interview, “This is an effort on our part to get these guys as ready for training camp as they can get, without going to training camp. That’s the allure of it.”
If any positive progress doesn’t take place in the upcoming meeting between the union and the league, the NBA may have to cancel the preseason games and also have to postpone the training camps that will take place before the regular-season
opens.
The competition includes eight teams that will feature flock of NBA players like John Wall, Zach Randolph, Chauncey Billups and Stephen Jackson will be among the headliners from different teams like New York Knicks, Los Angeles
Clippers and Houston Rockets.
40 NBA players have made the commitment to participate in the argument that will follow all the rules of the NBA except for the 12 minute quarter rule instead each period will last for 10 minutes.
Moreover, the teams in the competition will play without coaches, pacts or the charter of the NBA. The pullovers are also going to be different from the regular league jerseys. However, this is going to be the first of it’s kind
tournament after the lockout in which NBA players will compete against each other.
Some believe that the level of competition is not going to match the calibre of the NBA, but Abunassar thinks otherwise.
Abunassar said, “The way we’re going to play — with all the N.B.A. guys, with a lot of intensity, with not making it a circus, so to speak. These guys are here to get the best basketball they’ve gotten. No one wants to be in eighth
place, that’s for sure. It might not matter to you and I, but it matters to them.”
Teams will be formed on equivalence basis and NBA team-mates will be kept on the same side in order to keep and further develop the chemistry between the fellows. Billups will possibly join forces with his Knicks team-mates Shawne
Williams and Iman Shumpert. While one team will feature at minimum four players of the Rockets: Chuck Hayes, Kyle Lowry, Courtney Lee, Mo Williams and Chase Budinger. Clippers’ DeAndre Jordan will form the interior of a squad and the lockout league is also
hoping that last season’s rookie Blake Griffin may also join them.
Each team will feature seven to eight players and will play on daily basis and the final part of the series includes two days of playoffs and the final on September 23.
Abunassar has planned to broadcast the games live through internet and is also planning to sell the tickets of the games that will cost 500 per day, profit will be donated.
Other players who have promised to partake in the lockout league include Jermaine O’Neal of the Boston Celtics, Eric Maynor of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Al Harrington of the Denver Nuggets, J. J. Hickson of the Sacramento Kings,
and Jared Dudley of the Phoenix Suns.
Box scores and standings will be posted on the regular basis, as the competition level is expected to be lot more, higher than the summer exhibition games and if this series went well then Abunassar will set this tournament in
each of the upcoming month until the league lifts the lockout.
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