Edmonton event spiked as CEBL runs out of time

The Canadian Elite Basketball League held out hope for as long as it could.

But as COVID-19 continued its relentless assault on just about every aspect of life on the planet, options fell off the table one by one.

Waiting it out and seeing if they could play a full season?

Nope.

Trying to sneak in an abbreviated schedule and playoffs?

Nope.

Splitting the league into East and West with everyone staying on their own side of the country? That’s out, too.

The league is down to its final line in the sand: A seven-team round-robin series followed by a single-game playoff bracket. All of it would take place in a hub city in Ontario, starting in late July.

“We had a bunch of different plans, more than a dozen scenarios,” said John Lashway, the CEBL’S vice-president of strategy and communications. “But each one of those had to be changed constantly because every couple of days stuff changed (across the country).

“We play in four different provinces, so it was like trying to build a puzzle without borders and the pieces keep moving around on you.”

Eventually, the disease ran the CEBL out of time, backing it into an option that nobody is thrilled with, but all agree is better than nothing.

“Eventually, things started eliminating themselves from consideration just because of time restraints,” said Lashway. “We can’t push our league back to September or October because our players play internationally. They play in leagues in Europe over the winter and those leagues are planning to start up again. “So it’s a tournament or nothing, now.”

And even a tournament isn’t set in stone. There is still an enormous amount of planning and organizing that needs to take place, even before the medical issues are discussed with government and health officials.

“We don’t envision anything starting before July 15,” said Lashway,

adding they’d need about a week of training camp followed by the tournament. “And if we have to push that back a week or two, we can.”

The league’s announcement Monday also closes the door on the 2020 CEBL Championship Weekend, which was originally scheduled for Aug. 12-14 in Edmonton. The final four teams were going to decide the league title here, with top players from all seven clubs in town for what organizers hoped could be basketball’s version of the Grey Cup.

The pandemic shut that down in a big hurry.

“Basketball is really strongly supported by music and pop culture and the whole lifestyle that goes with it,” said Edmonton Stingers president Brett Fraser. “It’s one of the most interesting sports that way, so it would have been an exciting and entertaining championship.”

Fraser said it’s disappointing, given how hard the Stingers staff worked to get the Champion Weekend in place, to see it all washed away.

“The logistics of it were very heavy,” he said. “Producing a festival, a gala, a tournament with multiple cities coming in, booking hotels and flights and everything — we’d done it all. And just as we were ready to roll out the next stages of communications …”

They had to shut it all down. An opportunity to showcase the team and the league will have to wait. And the momentum the Stingers built during their inaugural season last year is also lost now that they won’t play any home games this year.

“We’re not going to beat around the bush,” said Fraser. “It’s going to be hard not playing any games between last August and next May. To try and build off of (the inaugural season) is certainly going to be a challenge.”

Fraser believes they will get through this, though.

“The people who came to the games last year are still our biggest ambassadors. The reviews from last year couldn’t have been better. That means a lot.”