Eastern heading to Basketball Champions League qualifiers, first Hong Kong side to play in tournament in 22 years
- Eastern are in Group A alongside NS Matrix Deers of Malaysia, Prawira Harum Bandung of Indonesia and Mongolia’s league runners-up
- Four spots in the next stage of the region’s biggest basketball club competition are up for grabs at the tournament in Ulaanbaatar in April
Hong Kong will have a representative in the region’s biggest basketball club competition this month, the first time a team from the city has competed in the top tier for more than 20 years.
Local A1 Division champions Eastern have secured a spot in the first round of the Basketball Champions League Asia qualifiers, which will take place in Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital, from April 3 to 7.
Senior club officials said the return of the tournament, which was previously known as the Fiba Asia Champions Cup, presented local players with “glorious” opportunities to test themselves against the best in the region.
“It’s been too long since a local team last played in the tournament,” Wilson Choi Fong-yue, the team manager, said. “These are some rare opportunities for our players to make a statement for themselves if they are to pursue overseas opportunities.
“Me and Yung Kam-wah earned overseas contracts after playing in the Champions Cup, so 20 years on, the current generation have the same opportunities.”
Launched in 1981 and last held in 2019, the Fiba Asia Champions Cup has been won once by a team from Hong Kong, when Regal beat Kia Motors in the 1997 final, before losing to Beijing Hanwei a year later.
