Salud plans fresh moves for fans’ sake

PBA COMMISSIONER Chito Salud is determined to enhance the quality of the league’s games in order to bring the fans back to the playing arena and improve television ratings by a series of positive steps.

Salud told a media briefing at the PBA offices in Libis, Quezon City, that the pro league will begin with “the introduction of an officiating philosophy that will entice and encourage players to play their hearts out, to play with more passion and for one overriding concern which is pleasing our basketball fans.”

“We will not reinvent anything but we need to start shifting gears,” said the lawyer-son of the eminent former commissioner Rudy Salud.

The younger Salud also announced a general framework where “only clear and hard contact will be called, eliminating touch fouls and marginal contact fouls.”

He said the intention is to reduce the opportunities for referees to vary in their interpretation of the rules in different situations by simplifying their application.

The Inquirer learned that the referees’ ranks had lost two officials. Trongy Aldaba decided to concentrate on his job as an engineer while the contract of another referee was not renewed.

Two former players, the PBA’s Johnedel Cardel and San Sebastian’s Mark Landayan, had applied to join the ranks of pro league referees.