By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
On the day during which Euroleague informed the public for one more letter towards FIBA, the international basketball federation announced that the competitions commission is holding a two-day meeting on the “House of Basketball” in Geneva.
The 22-person body will review all official competitions of FIBA, in order to examine the details of the FIBA’s new competition system which comes into effect in 2017, namely the national team qualifying games windows. As Eduardo Bazzi, the chairman of the commission, said: “This commission has a very clear objective, which is to implement the new competition system. It is about implementing something that had already been decided during the previous term. We will need to work hard to be able to coordinate windows worldwide for us to have 70 games with 140 countries participating. Clearly there will be significant work from the technical aspects; they will need qualified referees, adequate infrastructures in each of the regions. We will need adequate infrastructure in each of the hosting cities, which will also need to decide which of the airports and hotels can receive guests comfortably in the windows established. Each window is going to be nine days where there will be an intense transit of players coming and going, and therefore ‘conditions’ need to be foreseen as this will be the first time that basketball will be engaged in such an intense activity. Other sports, such as football, handball, volleyball, rugby have already done this”.
The commission includes among others former players like Dejan Tomasevic and Dino Meneghin.