With a bumper crop of talent joining this year’s PBA Rookie Draft and a new team taking over an existing franchise, PBA teams will be allowed to select players beyond the second round of the draft.

A member of the league’s Board of Governors, who requested anonymity, confirmed the news to InterAKTV.

“Teams can pick beyond second round until they pass,” wrote the board member in a text message.

The league had previously kept the draft to just two rounds, with undrafted applicants automatically becoming free agents.

But with a deep draft led by hopefuls from the SMART-Gilas Pilipinas national team and with a new franchise, Shopinas.com, needing to build up its roster, the league decided to remove the restrictions.

The PBA had previously allowed the annual event to go on as long as teams were interested in drafting recruits, but limited the draft to just two rounds in the 2005 edition of the event. One reason for limiting the draft to two rounds was a previous agreement between the PBA and the Philippine Basketball League, which required the pro league to give its amateur counterpart a “development fee” for each player drafted from a PBL team.

But the PBL hasn’t held a tournament in 2010, with most of the commercial league’s players and teams seeing action instead in the PBA D-League.

SMART-Gilas spitfire guard Jayvee Casio leads seven other national team members who have joined the draft. Along with Casio are Marcio Lassiter and Chris Lutz, Mark Barroca, Mac Baracael, Dylan Ababou, and Jason Ballesteros.

Former PBL Most Valuable Player Paul Lee, meanwhile, heads the list of amateur stars who are hoping to make it to the PBA. Other notable players on the list include 6-foot-4 forward Ken Acibar, reigning D-League MVP Allein Maliksi, Reil Cervantes, James Martinez, Eric Salamat and Ariel Mepana.

source: Reynaldo Belen -InterAKTV