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After years of declining interest, the Indonesian Basketball League hopes a new name and a new approach will revamp its fortunes.

The IBL was relaunched as the National Basketball League on Tuesday, boasting a theme of “New Season, New Hope for Indonesia” for its first season.

In addition to the new name, the NBL — which now has the Development Basketball League as its promoter — will feature more regular-season games and a new tournament format.

“The league is reborn with a spirit to regain the golden era of Indonesian basketball. With a new name, we can have a fresh start,” DBL director Azrul Ananda said on Tuesday.

All 10 clubs from last season have registered with the NBL, including defending champion Satria Muda Britama.

Azrul said the league would would adopt the approach of US college basketball for its postseason. The NBL preseason begins in July and the regular season tips off in October, featuring series in Surabaya, Bandung, Solo, Denpasar and Jakarta.

The top eight teams advance to the single-elimination postseason tournament in March. The season includes 166 games in total.

“In previous competitions, clubs only played each other twice, so they played a total of 18 games per season. Now they will meet each other three times in the regular season,” Azrul said.

“The single-elimination games, just like in the NCAA, will give more drama and suspense as you’ll be out if you lose.” Plans to allow NBL clubs to sign foreign players, which had been discussed since last season, were put on hold.

“Our focus right now is to first revamp the league. I think it would be better for the clubs to use their money to develop themselves first and then we can talk about bringing foreign players here,” NBL head of commissioners Erwin Bella Harahap said.

Erwin said he had high hopes the new top flight would help halt basketball’s downward spiral.

“All the clubs and the basketball community fully support the new league. We want Indonesian basketball to reach its golden era,” he said.

Satria Muda coach Fictor Roring said his club would be busy as it still planned to compete in the Asean Basketball League.

However, the Indonesian powerhouse is still in talks with the NBL to get permission to play in the regional championship.
League regulations forbid clubs from playing in two different league at the same time.

“We have discussed the matter with the NBL commissioner, and we're still trying to find good solution,” Fictor said. “I think it's impossible for us to abandon one of the competitions as we have committed to both. We don’t play in the ABL just for club’s sake, but for country's sake, too.”

Azrul said the matter was still under discussion, declining to comment further.

In seven seasons of the IBL, Satria Muda won the league title five times, with Aspac Jakarta the only other team to win the trophy, in 2003 and 2005.