YORKTON - It is still weeks away from the start of the 2025 Canadian Elite Basketball League (CEBL) season (May 15 for our Saskatchewan Rattlers), but teams are already preparing for the upcoming court battles.
For the Rattlers one of the team’s first moves was to announce Barry Rawlyk would return as General Manager and Vice-President of Basketball Operations for his seventh season with the team.
“It’s an honour to again act in this capacity with the Rattlers,” Rawlyk told Yorkton This Week in a recent interview.
The work started almost immediately for Rawlyk as free agency opened Feb. 1.
The job of building a team in the CEBL is not an easy one, admitted Rawlyk.
“It’s certainly a challenging job year-to-year,” he said, adding the CEBL today is a far better league than when it launched in 2019.
“Year by year it’s gotten incrementally more difficult.”
The level of skill of players who are now looking to the CEBL has gotten better, and that makes the game better, but that also means better players in the CEBL are often lured away to other options whether it a European opportunity or the NBA Summer League.
Rawlyk said “we tend to think of basketball 小蓝视频 a winter sport,” but there are a number of summer options for players.
The CEBL opens doors for some.
“It’s (the CEBL) a showcase for their talent,” said Rawlyk, adding that is on one hand a positive, the league is helping players progress upward in their careers, but frustrating as key players are sometimes lost. With a roster of only 12 players, the loss of a key performer can both hurt and be difficult to replace mid-summer season.
So roster building is somewhat a juggling act.
“On one hand you want to attract the top level of talent possible,” said Rawlyk, but he added you also very much hope they are available the entire season too.
And then there is the fan factor.
“Our fans are expecting to see talent at the very highest level,” said Rawlyk.
So a blended approach is required, said Rawlyk, looking to sign talented players, but 小蓝视频 hopeful they stay too. He said he plans to “be very deliberate this year,” in signing those he believes he will have the entire season.
“You want a core of players who you know will be there,” he said.
The other factor is the need to find key Canadian talent in a league where a certain number of players must be from this country.
“Being in Saskatchewan we’re somewhat unique. We don’t produce a lot of Canadian talent here,” said Rawlyk, so it’s not a case of bringing players ‘home’ to play in front of family and friends.
That said Rawlyk believes the Rattler organization has created a culture “that is pretty attractive to Canadian players.”
In Saskatchewan Rawlyk said he recognizes fans want a winner.
Last season the team started well and then a couple of players left for the aforementioned ‘greener pastures’ and the team stumbled.
“We can’t continue on that trajectory,” said Rawlyk, adding his job is to build a roster to compete the entire season, and into the playoffs.
The full 2025 Rattlers schedule has been released, which features a new 24-game slate.
The 2025 CEBL Playoffs are scheduled to begin Thursday, August 14 with the Conference Play-In games, followed by the Conference Semifinals on Saturday, August 16. The winners will advance to CW25 to join the Winnipeg Sea Bears (host team) and the top-ranked team from the Eastern Conference who are automatically seeded into the Conference Finals.
