By Stefan Djordjevic/ info@eurohoops.net
Zalgiris GM Paulius Motiejunas joined the club’s podcast for a 30-minute interview during which he talked about the current situation of the basketball world due to the coronavirus outbreak and how they’ve been dealing with it.
Among other things, he noted that the main goal is to finish the 2019-20 EuroLeague season regularly and the postponement of the Olympics has given more room for that option. However, everybody is aware that there’s still a possibility that the season will get canceled:
“Among all those scenarios, it is one of them. But immediately we stated that we’re not considering it, and we’re not even putting it up for a vote. We’re looking for ways to finish the season. We all know that is an option somewhere but we haven’t discussed it.”
One of the scenarios is to hold the remainder of the season in a single city within a few weeks. Outside of the format problems, however, there might also be logistical issues as different countries deal with the outbreak in different ways and times.
Motiejunas was also asked if it would be possible to finish the season without the American players in the roster if it came to that. He wasn’t too thrilled about the idea:
“I guess it’s possible but how would the teams look? Then it’s not the same championship anymore, not the same roster. You were putting together a team and you want to finish it like that. We finally found the chemistry, playing together after that bad run. We want to see how we’d look later on. If you take away the American, what are you really doing it for?”
He also talked about the contracts but he believes it’s far too early to get to conclusions at this point in time, especially about the next season, although the budgets will most certainly take a hit: “I think it’s too early. We should have several waves, and this is the first one. We’ll have to agree on making the season’s contracts smaller. EuroLeague is talking to the Players Association, negotiating. We’ll see what comes of it. While we talked about it, it’s not time to discuss that next season, The budgets, prices, and wages will take a hit and will have to be smaller. But it’s not the time to talk to everyone, discussing what might happen.”
Motiejunas noted that it’s a bit different for the big clubs that have teams in multiple sports, such as Barcelona which reduced the players’ salaries by 70%: “Barcelona is a different situation since they have a lot of sports and are taking a common look at the pyramid. Football, basketball, field hockey, other sports… They have to look at their own thing but they do know what we’re talking about with ELPA. They’re looking at their own structure though.”
Take a look at what Motiejunas had to say about the Lithuanian League getting canceled, how he handles the lockdown and quarantine, his and the team experience as EuroLeague was making the decision to pause the season and more: