By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
The Heraklion 2016 basketball tournament in the Greek island of Crete is a great test for Crvena Zvezda, Anadolu Efes and Olympiacos before the upcoming Euroleague season, which is going to be much different.
With a 30 games regular season, the competition now is a real league and starting slow can be an issue. That’s what the coaches of the three teams explained with Giannis Sfairopoulos of Olympiacos speaking about the difference: “It will be something totally different with many more trips and many more games. We will also have five weeks in which we will play two Euroleague games in five days, so we have to keep our team fresh as best as we can. There’s no group stage in which the results didn’t count in the Top16. So every game from the start is very imporant. We have the roster and the quality to respond. Also the fans will have the chance to see more quality games and I am sure that they will help us”.
Velimir Perasovic of Anadolu Efes added: “We don’t know yet how it will affect us. For sure it will be a different year. We need a bigger roster, there will be more trips and we should be more concentrated. This change is for good, but there are new issues. It will be a big different for a team to have the ability to travel with charter planes, than using commercial airlines. The rich will have more chances, like they always did”.
Dejan Radonjic smiled: “I agree with both. I don’t have anything else to add. We will probably not have charter planes, so this is one more problem fro us”.