By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
According to Giannakis the debate between the two sides must stop, because the only victim in this situation is basketball.
“European basketball is on the most critical and dangerous path of recent years. The situation that has been created is not hurting FIBA. It is not hurting the EuroLeague. It is only hurting the sport that we have all loved and to which we have dedicated a small or bigger part of ourselves and of our lives. Basketball, through the EuroLeague but also the international competitions, has one goal: To become as big as it can be. To attract young people in its arms, like those we saw in the recent EuroBasket; to make new fans, to become known and loved in many more corners of Europe.
Greek basketball had and has the fortune of possessing big teams, very big teams. The greatest of all is one: the national team. The one the players serve not as professionals, but as people. People devoted to their country and everything it has given them.
The EuroLeague has managed to create a powerful league that the people take joy in watching. On the other side, though, FIBA has a historical and institutional duty to serve the teams that unite people, regardless of the teams they support, that make an entire people and not just part of it happy, that have proved to be the main vehicle for the development of our sport. The national teams! There is a proposal on the table that could take us out of this stalemate, and the sooner we find the solution as a basketball society, the closer people will come to all of us”.