Entourage Basketball Inc. joins forces with established team, Bandits, to form a new squad for the Spring 2017 Fastbreak Men’s League.

Six years ago, the Entourage team playing in the BBaxn-league was on the verge of collapsing. Even though the roster dominated multiple regular seasons over the years, the championship trophy case stayed empty. Mostly run by Evan with some help from Bryan, that incarnation of E.B.I. nearly broke apart after the former left Singapore to work overseas.

Enter Mike Julian, a high-energy american power forward  and teammate who refused to let the team crumble. Picking up the E.B.I. remnants and adding new players, Mike formed a new team by the (somewhat unfortunate) name: I.R.A.
By 2012, the team had been renamed the W.E.T. Bandits, retaining green as the uniform colour. Mike’s pride in his Massachusetts roots were starting to shine through, seeing as the unis resembled the ‘St Paddy’s day’ version of the Boston Celtics.

A year later, the team, now just ‘The Bandits’, had gone through another transition, with center Gerry taking over the managing duties. Another uniform change and the addition of veteran players resulted in multiple second and third place finishes in the BBaxn playoffs. The trophy remained elusive.

Finally in 2014, parallel to fielding a team in the BBAXN Midweek league, the decision was made to join the Fastbreak Mens league, a fresh competition run by one of the best Basketball organisations in Singapore. FastBreak Basketball club, based at United World College of South East Asia, Tampines Campus, a top 3 Basketball facility in the country, and founded by former NBA-Europe manager, Mike Denzel, embraced the Bandits, who have been battling in that league ever since.

Following a fourth-place finish late last year, Bandits captain, and E.B.I. center, Jean Baptiste approached EntourageBBall manager Dave to propose a possible merging of teams for the new season, starting February 2017. Bandits were losing some players and in danger of not fielding a team.
Some teammates on the Crossover League championship squad had expressed interest in playing during the week, as well as weekends, hence the merger was a welcome solution.

Current E.B.I. players joining the core Bandits team are  Chi, Alejandro, Ronnie, Javier, Sinan and Tolga with JB pulling double duty as well. Games are played every Wednesday at UWC East.

The Bandits tradition of wearing green has been upheld, E.B.I.- midweek will be sporting the current home greens, the players do look quite comfortable playing in them judging by the gifs from the game 3 victory (March 8), against Blue Steel below:

Jean Baptiste and Rob will guide the team with the stated goal of soon being able to challenge for the top positions in the league, currently dominated by back-to-back winners (and well known veteran squad); the Iguanas.