By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Spanish Basketball Federation president Jorge Garbajosa accused the EuroLeague of inflicting a “tremendous damage” to basketball due to the schedule that has been implemented starting from 2016-2017.
Garbajosa mentioned that the increase in the number of games in the regular season has created problems for basketball at a national level in Spain and not only.
Here’s what Garbajosa said on the aforementioned subject plus the run of the Spanish national team in the first stage of the World Cup Qualifiers, during an interview with Spanish ABC:
Per ABC.es:
And what is the main problem?
“The attitude of EuroLeague with basketball in general and Spanish basketball in particular, the tremendous damage, the wear and the tear that it causes and how harmful it is at the present and for the future of our sport. EuroLeague does us a lot of damage and it’s a matter of a difficult solution.
-A problem that the former president of the CSD did not know how to solve …
Yes, but you have to understand the circumstances. José Ramón Lete was only a few months in office. We had countless meetings on the subject with him and in the end, it remained a difficult issue, at least at the national level. We are talking about a European competition, with a competition Commission in Europe, an international federation with its continental branch … it’s complicated. And that problem is not a question of any stubbornness of ours, but facts. Of data. Because when Euroleague says that it cares about the health of the players, who play a lot of games, why do they put two more teams and put four more days in their tournament? The problem is not of the players of Obradoiro or Burgos, but of the teams that play the tournament of Mr. Bertomeu. He can’t fool people. It is an issue that affects many teams and many federations. There cannot be an external competition that does so much damage to national basketball and we will fight to change that.
You made a virtue of that problem with the so-called “FIBA Windows squad” …
– Regarding the sports result, yes we did very well. We designed a previous team. We have a great relationship with the players and we are very honest with them, without lying. This allowed us to create a team of “heroes” for this country. That’s what I told them at the end of the last game of the first phase. They have saved Spanish basketball from the biggest crisis in its history. We won’t ever be able to thank them enough. The fans feel identified with players who they didn’t know very well before. I’m not saying that they were unknown because they are all top-level players. It seemed the Fran Vazquez was out of basketball and now he is our (national team) franchise player, to give just one example. That does not mean that the conflict has been fixed because the Euroleague will not stop. The problem is getting worse and I’m only asking for the Spanish basketball unit to face a person whose interests are radically against those of our basketball. And it is not only the ACB, but the entire sports pyramid that is at risk.