By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Despite losing 91-89 in overtime against Crvena Zvezda in Round 34 of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Regular Season, Fenerbahce managed to book the ticket for the playoffs thanks to Olympiacos‘ win against Baskonia.
In the post-game press conference and speaking in Serbian, Dimitris Itoudis criticized the qualifying system of the current EuroLeague, proposing an innovative format inspired by the NBA. “In the beginning, there were 16 teams and eight could go further: that’s 50%. If we compare it with the best league in the world, 16 out of 30 go to the playoffs in the NBA, and there is a play-in as well. They added something interesting to the fans. Here we added two teams, and yet only eight teams go further: it’s much less than 50%. Extraordinary”, he ironically commented on the way to qualify.
Saying that he wants something innovative from his CSKA Moscow days, he went on to explain his reasoning. “People are thinking about how to add something, how to offer more games and more interesting games. When 20 teams or 22 teams play, let only 6 of them advance to the EuroLeague playoffs, maybe that would be better”, Dimitris Itoudis jokingly added.
“We have many ideas as the EuroLeague Head Coaches Board, and we’ll be invited to express our opinion because we lead these organizations, we will give them. We want to have our say, we want a play-in, we want to make it even more exciting”, the Greek head coach finally stated.
PHOTO CREDIT: Turkish Airlines EuroLeague