Ranking of the Best Basketball Players Playing in the ASEAN League

- September 12, 2024

POSTED BY: Eurobasket

Starting a fight among sports fans is easy. Gently sneak up, ask "who is the greatest player of all time?", then watch the sparks fly as they throw convincing arguments at each other's unwavering ears.

Now ask a basketball fan that question, and you'd likely get a messy list featuring similar names like MJ, Bron, Kareem, Kobe, Curry, and a couple of other undisputed goats. While fans universally see eye to eye on which players can even enter the goat debate, the shortlists are hardly ever the same.

It gets even trickier with Asian basketball players. The ABL, for instance, is still just 14 years old, hosts teams from 10 countries, and witnessed a handful of teams exiting the tournament a few years after joining.

But with the help of Evelyn Balyton, our guest author and expert in the NBA and WNBA, we now present you with the ultimate list of the best ASEAN basketball players of all time. Doing this with a less popular league meant we had to travel back in time, dig through the archives, compare player stats/awards, and watch many fun highlights. Enjoy.

ABL's Official List of the League's 10 Greatest Basketball Players of All-Time

An official league coming together to name its greatest players is unheard of, mainly because such rankings are largely opinion-based. However, the ABL did just that to celebrate its first decade since they opened up shop. In 2019, the ABL let fans vote on their best players to grace the league. When the polls closed, these ten players received the highest votes to officially emerge as the ASEAN basketball league's greatest hoopers:

Bobby Ray Barbosa Parks Jr.
Leo Avenido
Chris Charles
Jerick Cañada
Marcus Elliott
Wong Wei Long
Steve Thomas
Attaporn Lertmalaiporn
Mario Wuysang
Xavier Alexander

Ranking The 3 Best ASEAN League Basketball Players of All Time

The ABL official list of their ten greatest players filters contestants a bit, but it still doesn't put the great debate to rest. So, who are the true best ABL players? We've screened through each candidate and considered their personal/team achievements to shortlist the three best ASEAN basketball league players of all time.

1. Bobby Ray Barbosa Parks Jr.

If not Bobby Ray Parks Jr., who else could we crown the best ASEAN basketball league player of all time? Just look at his accolades. In the three seasons Bobby Parks Jr. played in the ABL with the San Miguel Alab Pilipinas, he won the locals MVP award all three times (in a row!). Just as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar dominates the NBA with the most MVP awards, Bobby Parks Jr. now holds the record for most Local MVP awards in the ABL's short history.

Did we also mention that Parks Jr. won the Finals MVP after leading the Alab Pilipinas to the 2018 ABL championship? In his short stint in the ABL, Parks Jr. played 75 games and averaged an impressive 16.9 PPG, 3.6 APG, and 5.4 RPG while playing 30.7 minutes per game.

With the way Bobby Parks Jr. hoops, you'd think it runs in his genes. Well, his father, the late Parks Sr., earned the PBA Best Import Award a whopping seven times in his 12-year career in the Philippines (per ESPN). No other PBA league import has won the award more than three times.

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2. Leo Avenido

2009 gave birth to the ABL and saw the debut of the soon-to-be legend Leo Avenido, a 31-year-old man with an unforeseen career at the Brunei Barracudas. The Barracudas would fade away soon after, like many other ASEAN basketball teams, but not Avenido.

Shortly after, Leo Avenido joined the San Miguel Beermen in 2012. He guided them to the Championship Finals, where they emerged runner-up and won the local MVP award that same year. One year later, Avenido and his Beermen would lift the Championship trophy over the Indonesia Warriors.

Avenidos best spell came with the Beermen, but had a notable career with the Saigon Heat, the Singapore Slingers, and the Bangkok Cobras, amassing 1,627 points over six seasons to become the ABL's 5th highest scorer.

“As always, it’s luck! Maybe that’s my lucky word, that’s why I’m lucky!” said Avenido in a 2010 game after a remarkable comeback against the Thailand Slammers, where he scored a career-high of 30 points and made 5 of 11 3-pointers, leading the league at 3PM at the time. Nine years later, he proved that luck had nothing to do with his successes.

Many years passed, and Avenido's movements slowed, but his presence was just as commanding as his early days. Then, in 2017, the league did something it had never done before by crowning Avenido with the first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award.

3. Chris Charles

What would two World Import MVPs and three Defensive Player Of the Year (DPOY) awards earn you? That's right, a place in the ASEAN basketball league hall of fame. If left to personal achievements alone, Chris Charles can make a strong case as one of the most decorated Asian basketball players of his generation.

Despite coming nowhere near the championship title in 2013, Chris Charles had such a remarkable performance with the Sports Rev Thailand Slammers that he received the World Imports MVP and DPOY. However, his spell here was short-lived.

In 2014, Chris was faced with a massive decision. Stay with the Thailand Slammers, where he found recognition as a player, or move to the Hi-Tech Bangkok City and chase Championship glory. He chose glory, and it paid off handsomely.

In just his first season, Chris Charles led Hi-Tech Bangkok City to their first-ever ABL Championship trophy while winning the World Imports MVP award for the second time (back-to-back). He claimed the DPOY award again in his following season with Bangkok City and won it one more time in the 2017-18 season with the Singapore Slingers.

Is the ABL Discontinued? What The Future Holds for the ASEAN Basketball League

The COVID-19 pandemic was a major blow to the global sports industry, shutting down stadiums for months and even putting a hold on several major tournaments. But none had it worse than the ASEAN basketball league. The ABL was halted in March 2020, and while it was set to resume in 2021, the crisis loomed, and the date was pushed to 2022. The season was set to start in February 2022 but got moved to September. The ABL announced its return in October, but once more, things didn't go as planned, and the year ended on a sad note.

2023 did come with a raw of hope. The ABL hosted an invitational tournament that was won by Hong Kong Eastern. However, the league's woes continued as FIBA dropped support for the ABL. There have been no official announcements from the ABL ever since, and their social media accounts seem inactive. This uncertainty even led the Singapore Slingers to announce that “the ASEAN Basketball League (ABL) is unlikely to play for the foreseeable future.”

But fans remain hopeful that ASEAN basketball will come back better than ever. Traveling back to 2009, FIBA Secretary General Patrick Baumann said, "The ASEAN Basketball League is the first of its kind in Asia and a welcome indication of the maturity achieved by our sport. It will further boost the popularity of basketball in this area and beyond, while creating new opportunities and dreams for the FIBA family. We look forward to seeing new talents and countries emerge in basketball in the next five years as a result of this project."

Conclusion

Many have graced the ASEAN basketball league courts, yet very few have conquered. Ironically, fans still struggle to pick the best of these few great players. The ABL sought an answer to this dilemma on its 10th anniversary when fans voted their top players of all time. The result was a shortlist of the ten most-voted players. So, we decided to rank the three greatest ABL players using statistics, contributions to their teams, and personal achievements to judge. It turns out Bobby Parks Jr, Leo Avenido, and Chris Charles might be the ABL's greatest and some of the best-ever Asian basketball players of their generation.