By Niki Bakouli/ bakouli@eurohoops.net
After VTB United League, PBL and LKL, Loto league is also having a make over! You can forget all about Final Four at the end of each season. From now on, they are going to have playoffs series for the semifinals (best of 5) and they are going to try two different ways for… the end of the road.
For next season (2012-13), the finalists will play again one game, but for the next two seasons (2013-14, 2014-15) they will have two games between them for the championship title: the first one will be played to the arena of the team which will have the homecourt advantage and the other one away.
The second new rule which was approved by the central board of Israel’s league concerns the foreign players. Until this year, the teams could register four non Israeli players and they had to have at least two Israeli players on the court all the time. From next season they will have to choose from a) registering five foreigners and playing according to the “Russian rule” (having at least two Israeli players on the court – it is called that way because it was a past invention of Russian league) or b) registering four foreigners and using them together on the court at any given time.