By Sportswriter Shan Lei

Low spectator attendance, high expenses and too many lop-sided matches put the Asian basketball tournaments into jeopardy.

It is time for the Asian basketball to cut the 16-team championships or divide the competitors into different divisions according to their basketball levels.

The 25th FIBA Asian Men's Basketball Championships called the first round on Saturday. Only five out of the 24 matches were decided by less than 10 points and the averaging winning margin was 34.75 points.

Sri Lanka lost all three games by 85 points on average, including a 148-45 loss to Japan in group A, while title favorites China won three games each with a difference of over 40 points.

Shunsuke Ito (R) of Japan goes for a basket during a Group A preliminary round match against Sri Lanka at the 2009 FIBA Asia Championship for Men at Tianjin Gym in north China's Tianjin Municipality Aug. 8, 2009. Japan won 148-45. [Xinhua/Wang Yebiao]

Only matches involving the Chinese team could witness a full-house Tianjin Stadium, which was almost empty during the daytime games. The Tianjin Nankai Stadium, the other hosting court of the tournament, received much less audiences. Six tickets were sold in one of the games in Nankai Stadium.

The second phase of the championships feature top three teams of each group. The four teams which finished last in the preliminary round, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan, will play the placing finals at Nankai Stadium, which would definitely be much less attractive.

"We'd tried to put some of the matches in Dagang. It is a little bit far from downtown but might have more audiences. The ABA turned down our proposal," said Xie Delong, vice president of the Tianjin Sports Bureau.

The ABA had some hard time to find a city to host the tournament. The women's championships had to be moved to India after Chinese Taipei gave up the hosting right.

Teams from the less developed countries and regions had no chance to compete against China, Iran, South Korea and Jordan in the highest-level basketball competition of the continent.

More evidences show the ABC (Asian Basketball Champiomships) should be cut down to 12 or even eight teams, with others to play in the second or third divisions.

"We don't have enough budget to host the ABC, which need more than six million RMB (about 900,000 U.S. dollars). But Tianjin wasa city that co-hosted the 2008 Olympic Games. We don't want to let the world down," Xie said.

Xie said the organizing committee recruited over 1,500 volunteers for the tournament and hundreds of policemen and security guards are on standby.

"It would have been easier for Tianjin to host the competitions, or more attractive to the bidding cities, if the ABC had slash the number of participating teams by half," Xie said.

The organizing committee is happy to see tickets of Chinese matches were all sold out, but they would have been happier if all the seats were occupied throughout the tournament.

(Xinhua News Agency August 10, 2009)