By Neto Baptiste
A total of 14 teams, including two newcomers, will compete in this year’s Cool & Smooth Business League Basketball competition slated to shoot off on September 20.
This is according to one member of the organizing team and former national basketballer, Carl “Bowlie” Knight, who said newcomers ACT and Fearless Security Services, will join the ranks this year as anticipation continues to build ahead of Saturday’s opening fixtures at the JSC basketball court.
“Coming off of that league last year, you know, everybody’s just waiting to play business league basketball and we should have about 14 teams. But I tell you what, everybody’s been working hard. Business League is different; business league is in the air and everybody’s just ready to participate and to showcase their talent,” he said.
Speaking during a photoshoot organized for the teams at the JSC on Thursday, Knight hinted there could be one major change to the league this year but said organizers are still in discussion with teams.
“There is one major change, but you know what? I think I’m going to leave that because we had a meeting and we discussed it. But it seems like sometimes, guys discuss things and they just don’t understand what they’re discussing and so I’m going to hold on to this for a little bit instead of saying it right now. I’m hearing some complaints now like if they’re saying, hey, we don’t want that to happen so that’s going to hold it for a full time. Outside of that, everything is just the same. We play the same rules in ABABA with just a little tweak here and there to make it more exciting,” he said.
Knight, the country’s first Sportsman of the Year awardee, also addressed concerns regarding the allowance of teams to employ the services of players not employed with their company.
“There are some firms – take Sandals for instance – that might have had a guy who didn’t work for Sandals because we give them two outside guys, and what ended up happening is that they gave them a job because of maybe how important that guy is to the team. So that’s happening in business league all the time. We’re very happy about that; we can land guys to get jobs and so forth,” the former player said.
Sandals are the defending champions after having won both league and playoffs titles in 2024.
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