Jakarta, 9 April 2025
On April 9th, 2025, IADO was visited by the President Director of IBL (Indonesian Basketball League) Mr. Junas Miradiarsyah. The close relationship between the Chairman of IADO and the President Director of IBL has been established for quite a long time, because they have known each other since 2017 when preparing for the preliminary round of the FIBA World Cup in Jakarta in 2023 and also when joining the 2018 Asian Games committee (INASGOC / Indonesian Asian Games Organizing Committee). However, the main topic of the meeting between the IADO Management and the President Director of IBL was not nostalgia for the Asian Games, but related to coordination between IADO and IBL in order to increase awareness of players who are members of various clubs participating in the IBL competition. As it has been known, the IBL competition for 2025 officially started in Bogor on January 11th, 2025 and is attended by 14 participating teams that will appear in the event which will last until July 2025.
The IBL initiative to raise awareness of the dangers of doping among players was prompted by a recent case of suspected use of a banned substance that emerged in early April 2025, allegedly to a naturalized Filipino player who had joined an IBL club and was uniquely an important player for the IBL club, especially in the 2024 IBL playoffs. The naturalized Filipino player was previously banned for three months after testing positive for a banned substance at the 19th Asian Games in China in 2023, where he led the Philippines to their first gold medal in 61 years in 5×5 basketball. He was tested positive for Carboxy-THC, a compound related to marijuana. Although not a performance-enhancing drug, the drug is banned by WADA. Therefore, considering that each IBL club now has 3 foreign players, the IBL Board of Directors together with IADO and PERBASI (Indonesian Basketball Federation) want to gradually tighten doping supervision, including emphasizing that sanctions for those caught doping are universal as regulated by WADA.