Duration February 28 – July 17, 2009 Best Import Gabe Freeman (San Miguel) | ||
The 2009 Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Fiesta Conference or known as the 2009 Motolite PBA Fiesta Conference for sponsorship reasons, was the last conference of the 2008-09 PBA season. It started on February 28 and finished on July 17. The tournament was shortened to accommodate the training of the national basketball team for the FIBA Asia Championship 2009 qualifying tournament for the 2010 FIBA World Championship. The last conference had games on Thursdays and Saturdays. The tournament is an import-laden format, which allows an import or a non-Filipino player for each team and with a new height limit of 6-foot-6.
Contents
Two teams had new names before the start of the conference: the former Red Bull Barako was now known as the Barako Bull Energy Boosters, and the former Air21 Express were called as the Burger King Titans. However, with the failure of several business deals that would have changed the franchise's upper management, the Titans renamed into the Burger King Whoppers by their seventh game into the conference, retaining their old managemend headed by the Lina family.
Format
The following format was observed for the duration of the conference:
Classification round
The May 17 game between the Barangay Ginebra Kings and the Alaska Aces held at the Albay Astrodome in Legaspi was canceled when the playing court was judged as too slippery, with Ginebra leading 9–2, and 8:04 remaining in the first quarter. The game was stopped twice and the stoppages lasted two hours before the game was canceled. The game was restarted at the Araneta Coliseum on May 22.
Team standings
NA* = teams tied for 8th and 9th would have to play an extra game regardless of the results of their classification round games.
Results
The score given first is for the team indicated at the left-most column. Results to the right and top of the black cells are first round games, those to the left and below are second round games.*Overtime
Wildcard phase
Note: Rain or Shine and Burger King possessed the twice to beat advantage but it was not used as their opponents failed to win to extend the series into a deciding game.
Awards
Locals
*refers that the local had a higher statistic than an import
Imports
The following is the list of imports, which had played for their respective teams at least once, with the returning imports in italics. Highlighted are the imports who stayed with their respective teams for the whole conference.