Liga Pilipinas
 |
|
| Sport | Basketball |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2008 |
| Motto | "Ang Rebolusyon ng Basketbol" ("The Revolution of Basketball") |
| Country |
 Philippines
|
| Most titles | Cebu Niños (3) |
Liga Pilipinas was a regional basketball league in the Philippines. It was sanctioned by the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas, the country's national basketball federation, and owned by Pinoy Basketbol, Inc.
The National Basketball Conference and the Mindanao Visayas Basketball Association, along with Third Force Inc., were merged to officially form the league. The league's launch was on May 31, 2008, and games started on June 18, 2008.
In 2010, a merger between Liga Pilipinas and the Philippine Basketball League was proposed. The professional Philippine Basketball Association had hoped to form a "developmental league" from the two leagues, similar to the NBA Development League of the National Basketball Association. Through an agreement between Liga Pilipinas and the PBL, a joint tournament was held starting in June 2010. The joint tournament was held as a dry-run of the proposed developmental league. The tournament was named the Tournament of the Philippines.
Tournament of the Philippines used Liga Pilipinas' home-and-away leg format where 9 teams were involved, 3 from the Philippine Basketball League and 6 from Liga Pilipinas. The tournament started on June 9, 2010 and ended on September 13, 2010 when the M. Lhuillier Kwarta Padala-Cebu Niños became the TOP Champions by defeating the Misamis Oriental Meteors in a best-of-five final, 3-2.
After the tournament, merger talks between the 2 leagues went sour and was put off for good.
After the failure of the merger, the Philippine Basketball Association decided to independently form their own developmental league, called the PBA Developmental League.
After the PBA D-League was formed, Liga Pilipinas was able to hold one more tournament before folding in 2011 with Misamis Oriental Meteors finally winning their second Liga title by defeating Cebu Ninos in the finals of Conference V.
1st Leg: M. Lhuillier-Cebu Niños
2nd Leg: Cobra Energy Drink Iron Men
...
Wikipedia