By Yewhan Choi
On the 13th of October, the Korean Basketball League began its long journey to the end of the 2012-2013 season. Basketball fans all over Korea who were tired of waiting were finally relieved from their wariness. However, it wasn’t only the basketball fans who were excited; the players were also excited to show their improved performances that they have trained for during the summer. This 2012-2013 season is expected to be the best season ever since the 1980s and 1990 as the overall ability of players have improved due to the deep draft pool that has formed since the 2009 draft. Not only has the overall performance level increased, but potential stars such as Oh Se Geun (Anyang KGC), Kim Si Rae(Ulsan Mobis), and Lee Si Jun(Seoul Samsung) are beginning to show their full abilities. For a long time, Basketball had been in the shadows, unable to appeal to sports fans. However, it is now being illuminated once again due to enhanced performances in international competitions and the general expansion of the NBA. Now seems to be the right time for KBL to attract more fans to the game of basketball, appealing some fresh and hard-to-find traits from any other basketball league.
The first great aspect of KBL is the great team spirits within teams. As KBL is not a big league, there is less movement of players among teams. Naturally, players tend to stay in the team that drafted them and remain loyal to their fans. Due to these reasons, it is hard to find major changes within a team’s roster except the movement of foreign players. This eventually leads to better chemistry within a team as players play with the teammates they had been playing with for several years. This phenomenon presents many benefits for the team; the quality of passes goes up as players can predict how their teammates move based on experience. In exchange, having better quality passes leads to much more spectacular and fabulous plays during the official games. There is also a scientific research conducted by the Korea National Sport University that states the KBL scored the highest in the category of plays lead to score by passing per games surpassing the Euro League by far.
The second great characteristic that KBL has is that it is difficult to predict who wins and who loses. As KBL is a small basketball league, the opportunity to get drafted is given fairly equally to all the teams, greatly reducing the differences in the abilities of the players. Also, as teams have games with each other many times, the coaches’ game strategies are the biggest factor that determines the final results. Every game, coaches investigate for the flaws in the opponent’s tactics; these flaws can be used in turn to counter attack their opponent. For instance, on 9th of November, LG beat KGC by far. KGC seemed to be the winner before the game according to many experts, but LG slowed down the tempo and led the game to more of half-court offense which reduced fast break points that KGC could have earned. The unpredictable game outcomes and the suspense generated from them are what make basketball fans await every game.
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