Geography key to lack of expansion
The NBA Development League issued a statement to Metro Halifax yesterday offering the thoughts of president Dan Reed on why the Halifax Rainmen were not granted an expansion team for the 2008-09 season.
“Our due diligence revealed a number of operational issues related to Halifax’s geographical location that posed challenges given our current geographic footprint and status as the official minor league of the NBA, and (they) could not immediately be resolved in a satisfactory manner,” Reed said.
“Aside from these issues, we do feel that Halifax can be a strong market for an NBA D-League team, and we were impressed by the ownership, the arena and its management, commitments made by civic and business leadership, and the strong support for basketball in Halifax.”
The Rainmen announced Monday they had joined the Premier Basketball League after their bid to join the D-League fell short. Rainmen owner Andre Levingston gave no indication he would reapply to the D-League in 2009-10 and said he is “looking forward to a long relationship with the PBL.”
