KAI Sotto’s keenly awaited debut in the Land Down Under is facing a delay.
NBL commissioner Jeremy Loeliger admitted the league is prioritizing fan experience and travel issues and vaccination woes might derail the NBL’s opening on Nov. 18.
“Officially (the scheduled opening is) still Nov. 18 but there is certainly some murmur on the streets because of that fact that a lot of other codes are pushing back and we’re continuing to monitor the numbers on a day-by-day basis,” Loeliger was quoted as saying on ESPN’s Ball and the Real World.
“Given that we’ve always said our priority is our fans and allowing them to attend as many games in their home city as possible, it would be derelict of us not to continue to monitor and consider current circumstances of whether or not to push that date back a little further,” he added.
The 7-foot-3 Sotto was signed up by the ball club last April after a botched try to play for Ignite in the NBA G League.
Loeliger said another concern is the inoculation turnout in Australia.
While the NBL will not enforce vaccinations for its teams, Illawarra Hawks’ Travis Trice and New Zealand Breakers’ Tai Wesley came to “mutual agreements” to sever ties with their squads for their decision not to get vaccinated.
“We’re not a policy maker and this is a public policy issue, that’s probably the first point.
It’s not our intent to mandate vaccinations because the rules are the rules. If we were to try and preempt that now, in all likelihood the rule would change between now and when the season began,” Loeliger said.
“What we’re trying to do is make sure that everyone has as much information as possible and is educated as much as possible. Both about the consequences of taking or not taking the vaccination from a health perspective but also the implications potentially on their career or their season once the powers that be beyond our control step in and say, ‘You can’t cross into our state unless you’ve been vaccinated, or you can’t come into our venue, or you can’t come onto our aircraft’.”
Teams and players should decide, according to Loeliger.
“Clubs and players have to make those decisions between themselves. You’ve seen a couple of mutual releases and I think they were exactly that, they were mutual releases because coaches and clubs want certainty,” he said.
“Players want to hoop so it doesn’t really suit anyone’s cause if players are going to be sitting at home unable to travel to various destinations and coaches are going to be without their star players. It’s an unfortunate circumstance but such is the nature of the pandemic.”
The 36ers are coming off a seventh-place finish with a 13-23 card last year behind star Josh Giddey, who was chosen sixth overall by Oklahoma City in the NBA draft last July.
The son of former pro Ervin, Sotto graduated from high school at Miami School in Hamilton, Ohio last April.
A former UAAP juniors’ MVP with Ateneo High School and a former Gilas Youth mainstay now proving his worth with the senior’s squad, Sotto left the country in 2019 to train at the Atlanta-based The Skills Factory.
