CBA unveils revamp of league, regular season extended to 46 rounds

The Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) unveiled its revamp of the CBA league on Thursday by extending the rounds of the games, days ahead of the start of the 2018-19 season.

The regular season will be extended from 38 to 46 rounds, said CBA President Yao Ming at the new season launching ceremony on Thursday.

“It will be harder for our players, but I’ve been to worse with 82 games,” said Yao, who played for the NBA’s Houston Rockets from 2002 to 2011.

The 20 teams will be split into four groups based on last season’s results.

Teams in the same group will meet each other four times while teams from different ones will meet twice on a home-and-away basis.

Each team will play three games a week, compared to the previous five games in two weeks, Yao said.

Traditionally, the top eight teams at the end of the regular season would automatically qualify for the playoffs, but Yao introduced a new format.

The top four teams will automatically qualify for the quarterfinals, with the other four berths to be decided by headto-head games of teams which end the regular season in fourth to 12th place.

Quarterfinals will be a best-of-five format, while the semis and finals will follow a best-of-seven format.

The league will have two breaks – from November 26 to December 4 and February 18 to 26 – as the Chinese national team will be preparing for the World Cup in 2019.

Regular season will culminate on March 13, 2019 while the playoff finals will finish before May 12, 2019.

Reigning CBA champions Liaoning Flying Leopards will start their title defense against the Shandong Gold on Sunday in Shenyang, capital of Northeast China’s Liaoning Province. They will be given the newly designed CBA championship rings on court on Sunday.

Besides Liaoning, fans are also pinning their hopes on 2016-17 champions Xinjiang Flying Tigers and eight-time CBA champions Guangdong South China Tigers, with some warning that last season’s runners-up Zhejiang Lions are also potential title contenders.

On Thursday, the CBA announced that the best coach award of the season has been renamed the Chenghai Trophy, in memory of legendary Chinese basketball coach Qian Chenghai, who led China to five Asian championships.