The NBL, one of the two top men's basketball leagues in Japan, has endured a chaotic 2014-15 campaign, and the disarray reached its nadir with the management change of the Tsukuba Robots.

It came out of the blue for the fans. Just a week into the season in October, the NBL announced that Ibaraki Sports Academy (ISA), the Robots' management company, would no longer run the club because of financial woes and the league would temporarily take over the team.

In early December, a new management company, Tsukuba Sports Entertainment (TSE), was approved as the team's owner, with Takashi Yamaya, who had just stepped down as the league's chief operating officer when ISA exited the picture, as its president.