By Rawle Toney
Linden’s top eight basketball clubs will vie for championships honours from this evening when the Linden Amateur Basketball Association (LABA) bounces off its senior Club Championship at the Mackenzie Sports Club Hardcourt.
The clubs contesting the championship are Wismar Pistons, Victory Valley Royals, Kashif and Shanghai Kings, Glands Trucking Service Bulls, Patriots, Amelia’s Ward Jets, New Ballers and Alleyne’s Retrieve Raiders.
The tournament will be played on a round robin format where the top club will be decided by points accumulated at the end of the double round league.
Tonight’s matchup will see the Kashif and Shanghai Kings coming up against New Ballers in the opening encounter and National Club Champions Wismar Pistons will match skills with Alleyne’s Retrieve Raiders in the final Game of the evening.
The LABA president Unborn Smith speaking about the tournament said “We have had many setbacks; we had the weather to contend with, we had lots of disappointments in terms of the major sponsors coming forward to give us the support to move forward. But nevertheless, the association will honour its constitutional mandate which is to organise and promote basketball within the length and breadth of Linden as a town and the region at large and with this we have decided to have basketball played for the rest of the year, and even into next year”.
The embattled Smith, whose association has been coming in for some criticism for not having enough basketball being played in Linden mentioned that they have been struggling to find adequate sponsorship to have the sport properly organized.
None-the-less Smith declared that they would not let money stand in their way even though they will not have their first division players play for an unreasonable sum.
“The association would have been advocating a position, where first division basketball should not be played for less than $100,000 cash as the first prize. “We respect the skills of our players and the hard work and the level of entertainment that they provide to the fans and the community at large, and it is upon that we decided that they should be rewarded in a substantial way. So what I would say to you as president of the association is that the incentive will be nothing less than a $100,000 for the first place team. It can be more but not less,” said Smith.
The competition will be played on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays with double headers each night starting at 6:30 pm.