The Japan Basketball Association has come up with a 10-step outline for the creation of a new professional men's league in 2013.
The details are still sketchy, however, and no deals have been finalized yet. But the JBA is beginning to make preparations for the future.
"The topic of a merger is not something new," a JBA official said in a recent phone interview. "We have been talking about it for a while now and it isn't something that has suddenly come up in the last few months or anything like that.