According to domestic sports media @I_Love_Womens_Basketball, the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) has distributed a draft of the new season’s competition rules to WCBA clubs for feedback.
The report content is as follows:
Recently, the CBA sent out a draft of the new season’s competition rules to WCBA clubs for their opinions. This draft highlights several noteworthy changes.
Firstly, the “AB groups,” which were used in the 2022-2023 season, may make a comeback in the WCBA. According to the draft, the new season’s regular season will be divided into two stages. In the first stage, all teams will play each other once. In the second stage, teams will be split into two groups—A and B—based on their rankings from the first stage, with Group A consisting of teams ranked 1 to 10, and Group B comprising the remaining teams.
This effectively reduces the number of rounds in the regular season. Assuming there are 20 participating teams, the first stage would consist of 19 rounds, while the second stage would have 9 rounds each for Groups A and B, totaling 28 rounds. Last season’s regular season had as many as 36 rounds. The advantage here is that teams in the second stage will generally be more evenly matched, slightly reducing the number of lopsided games.
Secondly, regarding the policy for players from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, last season teams ranked 1-4 could register one player from these regions, while teams ranked 5th or below could register two players. There were no restrictions on playing time. Using the example of 20 teams in the new season, a total of 36 players from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan could potentially be employed if all teams were at full capacity. However, the issue is that “even the rich don’t have extra grain”—there were only seven players from these regions last season. Even if the quota is relaxed, it won’t magically create athletes of WCBA caliber.