Thirdy Ravena will play in International league! - Everything you need to know about Japan B League!

Last Wednesday, Thirdy Ravena made history yesterday as the first-ever Asian import to be signed in the Japan B League. 

This is a validation of the claim of Thirdy that he skipped the PBA draft last year because he planned to play international basketball. According to reports early this year, he received other offers from Europe and Australia.

So, what is Japan B League? 

It is the main basketball league in Japan that started only last 2016. Although, its lineage can be traced back to two other leagues, National Basketball League and Basketball Japan League. What happened was, FIBA was not happy when Japan had those two prevailing leagues, so they decided to combine them and form B League.

Thirdy Ravena was signed by SAN-EN NEO PHOENIX, which is based in the Eastern Mikawa and Hamamatsu in the Shizuoka Prefecture. It is around two hours away from the capital Tokyo. Just like the NBA, B League used a home-and-away format.

Thirdy was the first one to be signed using the Asian Player Quotas rule that Japan announced last year. This is a rule that allows the team to sign one Asian import. Other than the Asian import, each team can also have three more foreign players, and one of them can be a naturalized player. 

Now, only two foreign players are allowed to play at the same time on the court. What makes it interesting though is, if you watched a B League game, you will usually see more than four foreign players playing on the court at the same time. The reason is, foreigners are treated as local players if they are raised in Japan. Meaning, they finished their elementary in the country. 

The structure of the league is anchored to the football league structure in Europe wherein the league is divided into divisions and plays one tournament every season. They have 18 teams each in division 1 and 2 and 12 teams in division 3.

Yes, there is promotion and relegation every season, wherein the two worst teams in division 1 will be pushed down to division 2, to be replaced by the top 2 teams of that division. 

Those things are not as interesting though as the playoff format of the league. The 18 teams of division 1 is divided into 3 conferences. Wherein each team will play 60 games, 36 against conference rivals and 24 against the others. The top 2 teams in each conference will be part of the playoffs, together with the two squads with the best record who are outside of the top 2. 

Yes, the playoffs will be composed of eight teams. So, we have quarterfinals, semifinals and finals. Now, each series though in the semis and quarterfinals will only be two games.

So, what happens if it ends up in a 1-1 tie? At the end of game 2, they will have a quick rest and play a 10-minutes match. That will act as the tie-breaker. 

The finals is a single game, Superbowl style. 

Now, Thirdy will join Rob Dozier, the former PBA import, and Serbian player Steven Jelovac in San-En as an import. They are coached by Branislav Vicentic, also a Serbian. He will also play with Japan national team players in Atsuya Ota, a 6'9 banger, and Yuki Kawamura, a 19-years old prodigy.

Last 2019 and 2018, San-En failed to reach the playoffs as they ended up as the 13th and 12th place squad, respectively. 

Now, the 2020-2021 season is still up on the air because of COVID-19. The chairman of the league stated that October could be the earliest start of their season, which usually spans eight months.