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Basketball League Plans Local Team
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The game of professional basketball is returning to Youngstown -- with players who will run full-speed the entire game and concentrate on frequent and accurate shots, officials of the new team's league announced today in a news release.Mikal Duilio, International Basketball League commissioner, will be visiting Youngstown on June 18 to officially announce the formation of the team and to meet with community leaders, businesses and the media. The league will operate the team until an owner or ownership group decides to purchase it. Duilio says the IBL game will revolutionize the professional game and bring skill and athleticism back to basketball. "In an era when bigger, slower, defense-oriented players dominate, a final score of 80 to 79 is considered a high-scoring game," Duilio said. "Our game is faster, more athletic and more fun than anything fans have seen at the professional level in two decades."Placing teams in strategic clusters means the IBL will thrive and survive, said Duilio. Minor league sports teams struggle because most leagues are spread out over large geographical areas, he added. "Owners cannot afford to send 15 players, coaches and equipment by air to those cities. The IBL business model locates teams in geographical clusters that are a tank of gas away from each other. That means once an IBL team is established in a city, it will be there for a long time instead of just a couple of years."The Mahoning Valley Scrappers minor-league baseball team, which began play in 1999, opens its 2004 season this Friday in Niles, Ohio. However, professional basketball has had a tougher time locally, the most recent example being the Youngstown Hawks, which left town in January 2000. Prior to that, the Youngstown Pride and its World Basketball League folded in 1992.Duilio operates Portlandbasketball.com out of Portland, Ore. After more than 16 years organizing and scheduling 55,000 basketball games he believes the time has come to reinvent the game. "I want people to watch this game and be so impressed with the athleticism and skill of IBL players that they go home and say, 'Why isn't all basketball played like this?' The game of basketball at most levels is over-strategized, over-coached and slowed down to the point that it is tedious," he said. The IBL is planning its first games in April 2005 and the season will extend through June. Visit IBL at www.iblhoopsonline.com. "