600+ Foreigners Apply for KBL Draft

That’s the Korea-related news from Las Vegas this week. It turns that even if you played in the KBL this season you still have to fly back to Vegas and try out again. Cheer up, English teachers — it turns out everybody has to do ridiculous visa bullcrap.

Update: Hmmm, never mind. I guess I leapt to conclusions. It turns that only three players from last season were re-signed by their clubs for next season. So that explains why these guys are going to back to try-outs, I guess — I’m still confused. If their own teams didn’t want them what makes them think somebody else in Korea will? Also, on May 14 the number of registered players stood at just 99.

The KBL announced on the 26th that 606 foreign basketball players have registered for the KBL foreign players’ tryouts to be held in Las Vegas, Nevada starting on July 17th.

This is the second-highest number of registrations after only the 616 who did so in 2007. The number includes 27 players with previous KBL experience and 7 with experience in the NBA.

Among those with KBL experience are 29-year old Terence Shannon, who was awarded last season’s top foreign player award, 29-year old Victor Thompson, who played well for Samsung and Jeonju KCC, and 26-year old Brandon Klump.

34-year old Junior Buro, who played in the 2006-07 season for Anyang KT&G, and 29-year old Josh Kleinhard, who played last season for SK, have also registered but will not be able to attend the draft.

The KBL is not allowing players with two years of experience in major European professional leagues to attend the draft.

There are also Americans of Korean descent. 28-year old Tony Aikins has announced his intention to attend the try out and 30-year old Eric Sandrine of the Daegu Orions has also registered.

Also, 20-year old Jonathan Choi and 31-year old Mark Yu are gathering attention for having names which suggest Korean heritage.

The KBL sent the papers filled out by the registered athletes to the 10 teams for inspection until the end of May, after which the final list of players to be invited will be decided upon.

Eric Sandrine… everybody had such anticipation over him, and then I never saw his name in the headlines at all.

Source

~ by johnnytalkback on June 4, 2008.