Baloncesto Superior Nacional

The Baloncesto Superior Nacionalis the primary basketball league in Puerto Rico which debuted in 1929.

The 2011 season starts on May 31 wherein each team is to play 30 games. The Playoff comes after the regular season wherein the 8 best teams are divided in to two groups and compete with each other (1 versus 8,4 versus 5, 2 versus 7,and 3 versus 6). They will have to play the best of 7. The 2 teams winning the best of 7 will compete in the finals and the team that wins the best of 7 games wins the title.

The team leading the league is Vaqueros de Bayamón winning 14 championship titles tying up with Atléticos de San Germánhaving the same number of championship titles won. The Leonces de Ponce comes next gaining its twelfth victory in 2004.

During the reign of GenaroMarchand as president of the league, basketball became popular in all Puerto Rico making basketball as the second most loved sport by Puerto Ricans after boxing. Basketball became more popular in the country when WAPA-TV Channel 4 aired 6 games in a week on Wednesday and Friday nights at 9, and on Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. and 9 p.m.At present, the games are shown on Puerto Rico’s TUTV television channel.

With the help of the media, new basketball stars emerged and became popular to basketball fanatics. These stars include Raymond Dalmau, Mario 'Quijote' Morales, Ramon Rivas,Georgie Torres, Jerome Mincy, Angelo Cruz,Rubén Rodríguez, Angel Santiago, Jose 'Piculin' Ortiz,and the late Federico 'Fico' Lopez.

There were economic problems whenHetin Reyes became the president of the league. These problems were mainly due to national economy problem in Puerto Rico. The league still operateshaving thirteen franchises.

The league continues to experience economic crisis in 2005. There are only 9 teams competing this year after the Ponce Lions withdrew their slot in January since the selling of the team has been unsuccessful.

Henry Neumann became the president of the league but resigned in 2008 season since he entered the politics. In September 22,2007Neuman was replaced by Felix “Felo” Rivera, he is also the owner of the Criollos de Caguas team.

The officials discussed several changes in the leagues regulation including the restoring the previous rule of charging 50% penalty to franchises with payrolls greater than $500,000 cap.As stated earlier, this rule has been implemented way back in 2004 wherein Ponce and Santurceare the only teams failing to stay under the salary cap.

This rule has been abandoned in the end of the season. The new rule being implemented at present differs from the rule in 2004 in the sense that the money with penaltyreceived by the league will be given to teams failing to reach the cap. Dropping the restrictions on second reinforcement players was the second rule approved in the session. By the end of September, Juan Trinidad became the tournament directorreplacingMiguel Laborde.

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