FIBA: Japan has 6 months to merge basketball domestic leagues

Japan has six months to hammer out a plan for merging its two national basketball leagues, or risk not qualifying for the 2016 Rio De Janeiro Olympics, a senior International Basketball Federation (FIBA) official said Thursday.
During a visit to Tokyo, FIBA secretary general Patrick Baumann repeated calls for the Japan Basketball Association (JBA) to usher in reforms by June, after the body suspended Japan from international competition.
"It will be impossible for the athletes to try to qualify for Rio, so we have a very short window of six months," he told a press briefing, adding that it will be a "very difficult task, but not impossible".
Baumann said a task force made up of seven or eight people, including Japanese Olympic officials, would meet the first time at the end of January in a bid to break the impasse.
FIBA, the sport's global governing body, issued the ban last month, saying the JBA, which oversees the game domestically, had not met its requirements.
The JBA had failed to come up with a plan to merge the community-based professional bj League and the National Basketball League, comprising corporate-sponsored teams.
Talks over the integration of the two men's leagues have faced difficulties because of a divide between the NBL, which hopes to keep corporate team names and the bj League, which stresses ties with host communities, local media have reported.
The ban from international competitions will be applied to both men's and women's national teams, and threatens to lock Japan out of next year's qualifiers for the Rio games.
Source: AFP