By Franklin Kaweru

Copyright kawowo

The 2025 National Basketball League postseason has seen matchups on and off the court.

On the court, Sommet Basketball and Namuwongo Blazers lead their respective best-of-five semifinals after beating City Oilers and UCU Canons in their respective series openers on Tuesday.

The playoffs are the pathway to not only determining the winner of the league but also the team that will represent the country in the continental club competition, the Basketball Africa League (BAL), in this case.

For their decade-long dominance, the City Oilers have been the only Ugandan side to play in the BAL and that is likely to continue this year, regardless of who wins the 2025 National Basketball League. And this is the foundation of the playoffs’ second round off-court battle.

According to the Federation of Uganda Basketball Association (FUBA) president, Nasser Sserunjogi, the Federation had up to September 5 to nominate a team that would represent the country in the continent’s premier competition.

With the season not concluded on time, FUBA leaned towards nominating City Oilers for BAL 2026, something that has not been received well by the Namuwongo Blazers who, last week, through club CEO Daniel Obol, sought clarification from the federation about the matter.

While the FUBA president has addressed the matter through mainstream media, the Blazers have not received any formal response to their letter addressed to the secretariat.

As a result, the Blazers have written to FIBA Africa and the BAL to contest FUBA’s nomination of last year’s champions, City Oilers.

In the letter seen by Kawowo Sports, Blazers’ objections are founded on “Sporting Merit”, “Consistency and Precedent”, “Application of the FUBA Competition Rules”, “Fairness and Equity [Equality]” as well as apparent “Lack of Due Process”.

According to the letter, the Blazers should be nominated for Road to BAL 2026 by virtue of being regular-season winners.