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KBL to play out season despite scandal

March 8, 2013 - 18:56 By Korea Herald
The nation’s top men’s professional basketball league will play out the season despite the cloud of a match-fixing scandal involving an active coach, the league’s commissioner said Friday.

Han Sun-kyo, head of the Korean Basketball League, convened an emergency board meeting Friday to discuss fallouts from the match-fixing allegations surrounding Kang Dong-hee, head coach of the Dongbu Promy.

Hours after the KBL meeting, prosecutors filed for an arrest warrant for Kang, who allegedly took cash from two gambling brokers on four occasions to fix games in 2011.

Kang, the first active head coach of a South Korean pro sports team to come under fixing suspicions, has denied all charges. Prosecutors ended their 12-hour questioning of Kang in the wee hours of Friday morning.

Following the meeting, Han apologized for the trouble Kang and the league have caused the public.

“The investigation into coach Kang began yesterday and it may take a long time,” Han noted.

“We don’t know who’s telling the truth yet, but having seen him since his playing days, I believe Kang hasn’t been involved in any fixing schemes.”

Han rejected rumors that the KBL will cancel the rest of the season and the playoffs, saying, “We will continue on with the season as we normally would.”

The KBL, which was founded in 1997, has 10 teams.

Each team plays 54 regular season games, and through Thursday, teams have played 48 to 49 games.

The top six teams reach the playoffs. Kang’s Dongbu is tied for the sixth and last playoff spot with two other teams at 19-30. (Yonhap News)