Eastern shooting for more success in plan to join CBA
City’s only pro team aiming to play in mainland league in 2024 with Kai Tak Sports Park as a base
Hong Kong Eastern, the city’s only professional basketball team, hope to join the mainland league by 2024, using the expected completion of Kai Tak Sports Park as the springboard.
The club are understood to have been in contact with mainland authorities several times to seek the necessary approval. Sources with knowledge of the developments confirmed to the Post that progress had been made on all fronts.
Although a concrete time frame has yet to be agreed on for Eastern to start playing in the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA), the scheduled 2024 completion of the Kai Tak park, which could stage their matches, is viewed as essential to the plan.
The club wants to use the park’s 10,000-capacity Indoor Sports Centre as their home court in the CBA. They currently use Queen Elizabeth Stadium of 3,500 capacity or Southern Stadium, with 2,000 capacity.
Eastern Sports Club vicepresident Frankie Yau last week revealed the intention to join the mainland competition and aim to repeat the club’s success in the regional Asean Basketball League (ABL), which they won in 2017 in their debut season in the competition.
“Our hopes for development are limitless,” Yau said. “The ABL is the best in Southeast Asia, so to be part of China’s premier division has long been our vision, and we have been doing a lot of preparation to realise our dream.
“We aim to do well in the upcoming ABL season, to prove the team [are competitive and] fulfil the requirements to join the CBA.”
Previously known as Hong Kong Eastern Long Lions, the team turned professional in 2016. They competed in the ABL in their first pro season and won the finals 3-1 over Singapore Slingers in a best-of-five series.
The team then dropped “Long Lions” from their name and finished as semi-finalists in the next two seasons, while also being crowned Hong Kong A1 Division champions in 2018. The ABL was cancelled for three seasons from 2019-20 onwards, but is set to return in January.
“Our experience from the ABL seasons was the backbone of our greater ambition with the CBA,” team leader Wilson Choi Fongyue said.
“During our ABL championship-winning season, eight of our 13 home games were full houses, and tickets for the home play-off games were sold out in five minutes.”
Choi added that those numbers “proved basketball’s popularity in the city”.
Our experience from the ABL ... was the backbone of our greater ambition with the CBA
WILSON CHOI, HONG KONG EASTERN
The 2023 ABL season will adopt a new format, being held in four blocks of fixtures in hubs across the region.
The opening leg will be played in Singapore from January 2 to 8, then games will continue in Indonesia on January 12-18, Malaysia on February 3-8 and Vietnam from February 12-17.
After that, each team will have played their seven opponents twice. The top four at the end of the regular season advance to the semi-finals, with the host country of the finals yet to be decided.