Local newspapers reported that the final tipoff date of the 2006-07 SBL season has been finally decided by the SBL committee. The new season will begin on January 6, 2007, after the Doha Asian Games.
It's probably unfathomable for folks that are unfamiliar with Taiwanese basketball to know that the tipoff date was not decided until 44 days before the new season, but it's not that shocking for those who have been watching Taiwanese ball.
Anyway, the marketing guys of SBL teams (if they have any...) and the main sponsors, broadcasting TV stations, and all those staffs will have a busy and hectic month.
Venue will be another concern for the league as the gym it has been using for the last three years -- the TPEC Gym(Taipei Physical Education Gymnaisum) -- is scheduled to be tear down and reconstructed at the same location in mid 2007.
Also because of the scheduling problem, the SBL games between mid March and mid April next year are forced to move away from Taipei city to Tainan, a southern city; Sinjhuang, a satellite city on the outskirts of Taipei; and Miaoli, a mountain town in middle Taiwan.
It's not that there is no qualified gyms in Taipei city to house SBL games. The Taipei Arena (capacity 14,000) and National Taiwan University Gym (capacity 6,000) are both state-of-the-art venues for basketball. However the SBL will have problem paying high rents, which makes it virtually impossible to play there.