PBA's 2nd Conference on 27 January

The 2015 Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Commissioner's Cup is nearly around the corner. The second conference of the 2014-15 PBA season is scheduled to start on 27 January 2015 and scheduled to finish by mid April 2015.

The tournament allows teams to hire foreign players or imports with a height limit of 6'9" for the top eight teams of the Philippine Cup, while the bottom four teams will be allowed to hire imports with no height limit.

The format that will be observed for the duration of the conference is as follows:

• It will be single-round robin eliminations; 11 games per team; Teams are then seeded by basis on win-loss records.
• Top eight teams will advance to the quarterfinals. Ties are broken among points differences of the tied teams.
• Quarterfinals:
  
  • QF1: #1 seed vs #8 seed (#1 seed twice-to-beat)
  • QF2: #2 seed vs #7 seed (#2 seed twice-to-beat)
  • QF3: #3 seed vs #6 seed (best-of-3 series)
  • QF4: #4 seed vs #5 seed (best-of-3 series)
• Semifinals (best-of-5 series):
  
  • SF1: QF1 vs. QF4 winners
  • SF2: QF2 vs. QF3 winners
• Finals (best-of-7 series)
• Winners of the semifinals

The imports identified at this time are Chris Charles for the Blackwater Elite; Peter John Ramos for Kia Sorrento; Al Thornton for NLEX Road Warriors and Arinze Onuaku for the San Miguel Beermen. Alaska Aces and Rain or Shine Elastopainters were reported to be interested in bringing their previous imports, Rob Dozier and Wayne Chism, respectively.

The 6-9, 275-pound Derrick Caracter was supposed to fly in for the GlobalPort Batang Pier, but the Lakers’ second round draft pick in 2010 backed out at the last minute and decided to sign somewhere else.