Basketball Africa League to start in May 2021

The Kigali Arena will host the Basketball Africa League matches.

© Courtesy of QA Venue Solutions Rwanda

Text by: David Kalfa Follow

3 min

The Basketball Africa League plans to play its very first season from May 16 to 30, 2021 in Kigali.

The Basketball Africa League, created by the NBA and the International Federation (FIBA), was due to start in March 2020 but had to give up because of the Covid pandemic.

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This time, is it the right one?

Will the Basketball Africa League (BAL) start, more than two years after its

creation by the North American League (NBA)

and the International Federation (FIBA)?

In any case, BAL intends to kick off its inaugural season fourteen months after the scheduled date.

A very first season, now scheduled for May 16 to 30, 2021, which was due to start in March 2020 but which had been

postponed due to the Covid pandemic

.

The organizers have been working in recent months on reduced competition, the coronavirus crisis still not being resolved.

The twelve teams expected in 2020

[1]

will be there in 2021. They will be gathered in Rwanda for a two-week mini-tournament.

These twelve clubs will be divided into three groups of four.

The two teams classified first and the two best third will qualify for the quarter-finals.

The president of the Basketball Africa League, the Senegalese Amadou Gallo Fall

“We are thrilled that the inaugural Basketball Africa League season will take place at the world-class Kigali Arena”.

12 #African countries, 26 games, 1 winner.

GAME ON!

Learn more on https://t.co/NMZUGvgVOM@amadougallofall @NBA_Africa @NBAPR @NBA #theBAL pic.twitter.com/2EAybn6LbM

- Basketball Africa League (@theBAL) March 29, 2021

Towards health bubbles

The 26 meetings will take place at the Kigali Arena, which was to be the scene of the BAL 2020 finals anyway. The people involved in this event should be gathered in "sanitary bubbles" to avoid contamination.

There remains the question of the public.

Will there be spectators in the stands?

Discussions are continuing between the Rwandan authorities and BAL leaders.

Whether there are up to 2,000 or 2,500 people in a room that can hold 10,000 is not impossible.

But Rwanda and the organizers of the Basketball Africa League will not take any risks with this first edition which has had so much trouble to see the light of day.

It could therefore be played behind closed doors.

(1) AS Douanes de Dakar (Senegal), AS Police de Bamako (Mali), AS Salé (Morocco), FAP de Yaoundé (Cameroon), Ferrovario de Maputo (Mozambique), GNBC de Vakinankaratra (Madagascar), GS Pétroliers d ' Algiers (Algeria), Patriots of Kigali (Rwanda), Petro of Luanda (Angola), Rivers Hoopers of Port Harcourt (Nigeria), US Monastir (Tunisia), Zamalek of Cairo (Egypt).

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