By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
After it was announced that the newest side from Dubai would have entered the ABA League starting from the 2024-25 season, details about the club’s budget and more behind the scenes were revealed.
In an interview with Mozzart Sport, the general manager of the latest basketball side to enter the overseas scene shared when the first seeds were planted. “It is not by chance that we appeared. In an interview in 2016, I said that I wanted to bring the Euroleague to Dubai. It was a crazy mission at the time that everyone laughed at and called me crazy”, Dejan Kamenjasevic said.
Later on, he shared the vision behind the project. “Our project was clear, and that is the desire to bring Europe to Dubai, that is, Dubai to Europe. It was all a serious task to realize, not only from the sporting but also from the geopolitical and traditional aspects of European basketball. It took a long time”, Dubai’s GM said.
Commenting about next year’s budget, he revealed it will be around “four million euros”, and took a jab at the European way of running a basketball club. “Behind us stands the city that gave us our name, but we are obliged to find sponsors, secure television rights, and fill the hall. We want to be a stable club that depends on ourselves. The city will help us but at a normal level, not like in Europe where they give you money and you don’t have to do anything”, he shared.
Dejan Kamenjasevic also talked about the club’s next coach, with Sasha Djordjevic and Svetislav Pesic rumored to be frontrunners. “We haven’t signed a coach yet, but we found an agreement with one person. We know that he has to be from our area because we play in the ABA league and we want him to understand our mentality and the competition in which we participate”, he first admitted.
Talking about the current Serbian national team’s coach, he praised him. “He is like a second father to me. I see him as a legend and the greatest European expert. It was definitely my dream [to have him as Dubai’s coach], but a dream and reality are two different things. Now, it doesn’t depend so much on me as it depends on all the other situations that I can’t control”, Dejan Kamenjasevic concluded.
#ABALiga and BC Dubai held a joint press conference on the occasion of joining BC Dubai to the #ABALiga family.
Read more at: https://t.co/xZq9eZnwlw pic.twitter.com/o96tvbcany
— AdmiralBet ABA League (@ABA_League) May 28, 2024
PHOTO CREDIT: ABA League