Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Azio Eagles abalienated to Pure Youth Construction Teams



Get used to it. This team will probably change their name and management on an annual basis. Azio Eagles confirmed yesterday that Daniel Jiang, the owner of the team, has abalienated the team to Pure Youth Construction Teams.

Why ABALIENATED and not SOLD? Because Jiang basically handed the team over to the construction group for free. And I had to find the word ABALIENATE from a dictionary.

Anyway, Azio became the second SBL team changing ownership this summer following ETSN's sale to Segway Technology last week.

Azio, now Pure Youth, had a long history of struggling between different ownerships and names. It was known as Hong-kuo Elephants during the defunct pro league CBA (Chinese Basketball Alliance) days from 1994-1999. After that it was bought by former Sina.com President Jiang and renamed to Sina.

Jiang then relocated the team to Suzhou, China and played in China's CBA for two years before going back to Taiwan and joined the SBL. The team name was changed to YMY, then Azio.