Danang Dragons 384 days without winning in VBA
In the history of the Vietnam professional basketball tournament (VBA), no team has had a bad start to the season like the Danang Dragons. The Han River team broke the sad record of nine consecutive defeats at the beginning of the season of Hochiminh City Wings 2018.
The last time the representative of Da Nang won in VBA was 384 days ago. That was the victory against Thang Long Warriors 72-65 on July 27 last year. Since then, Danang Dragons have lost 16 matches in a row, including two matches last season and the first 14 matches of this season.
The loss to Hanoi Buffaloes on the evening of August 15 was the heaviest defeat of Todd Purves' teachers and students since the beginning of the season, with a difference of 32 points. Playing at home, but the Han River team was inferior to the second team in the group, soon leading deep.
The situation became more difficult, when coach Purves was disqualified in the second half. After a controversial situation by foreigner Jairus Holder, the American strategist strongly reacted to the referees and entered the field of play, leading to two consecutive technical errors.
For the first time in the 2023 VBA season, the head coach of a team was disqualified from directing in the match. A few days ago, Mr. Todd Purves was just banned from directing a match due to receiving enough technical errors in previous games.
After Mr. Purves was kicked out, Jairus Holder - foreign soldier of Danang Dragons also continued to receive two technical errors and "take a shower early" in the second half.
Lacking a head coach, lacking foreign soldiers, Danang Dragons played weakly for the rest of the match and let the opponent score 115 points. That is also the highest score that Hanoi Buffaloes have ever scored in a VBA game. Foreign soldier Anthony January of the Capital representative set a personal record with 41 points and 21 rebounds.
This year's VBA has seven participating teams, including Saigon Heat, Hanoi Buffaloes, Thang Long Warriors, Nha Trang Dolphins, Hochiminh City Wings, Cantho Catfish and Danang Dragons. The group stage has 63 matches taking place from June 10 to September 3. In the group stage, the teams met three times instead of twice like VBA 2022.
The two teams that finished first and second in the group stage were given a chance to advance directly to the semi-final series. The third to sixth teams will enter the play-in round, split the pair of three to win two to choose two teams to advance to the semi-finals. The tournament has determined the first team to go straight to the semi-finals, the Hanoi Buffaloes.
