By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
With EuroLeague publishing today the details of the proposal made and FIBA issuing its position yesterday – the three proposals mentioned in FIBA’s press release are essentially the same proposal with variations on the dates of the schedule – the key point remains the last sentence of FIBA’s press release.
“As the world governing body for basketball, FIBA as always is ready to study and take into consideration proposals that respect national teams and domestic leagues for the cycle after 2021”.
The two parties agreed that they disagree and nothing will change in European competitions until 2021. According to FIBA’s side, the fact that EuroLeague presented “terms” on the domestic leagues and the national teams having in mind a total regulation of European basketball was out of order. To be exact EuroLeague among other things proposed that every domestic league will consist of a maximum of 16 teams and they will not play more than 45 games per season in those domestic leagues.
In the recent past, FIBA also made a similar assessment about the maximum number of teams which will be ideal for a domestic league. In a meeting between the leagues and FIBA back in 2015 “there was a common understanding that, in the best interest of professional basketball’s development, stakeholders must align their competitions to a common sports Competition Calendar and by 2019-2020, top leagues should aim at having a maximum of 16 teams“.
However, the fact that EuroLeague entered that territory infuriated FIBA.
Τhere’s also one more point of infraction. Initially, it was rumored that EuroLeague asked for their players to be excluded in the prep games of the national teams. However, in the EuroLeague press release, those prep games were included as official games in the proposition made.
According to FIBA sources, which used the word “terms” and not proposals or discussion points, EuroLeague wanted a total agreement on every matter included in order to move forward. According to EuroLeague, everything was on the table in order to be discussed.
And that brings us to the elephant in the room. The key point is that in every proposal made by the EuroLeague, FIBA World Cup “windows” in November and February were not included.
Practically that was a deal breaker and even if FIBA has announced that they will take the proposals under consideration and talk about them with local federations and domestic leagues, the talks have stopped.
FIBA wants to have national team games during the season, EuroLeague does not comply with that and the situation is at a stalemate.
FIBA will not discuss anything that doesn’t include mid-season windows, while EuroLeague will not present any proposal that includes them.
And while there are obvious issues on the way mid-season windows are implemented in Europe with NBA and EuroLeague stars missing, according to FIBA “despite the attempted boycott by ECA, the first and second windows of the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 Qualifiers were played successfully in November and February respectively, breaking attendance records for home games”.
Simply put there’s not a common point between FIBA and EuroLeague in order to negotiate. It’s a sad realization, but it’s the reality of the European basketball. Things will not change in the near future, EuroLeague players – or at least most of them – are not going to play in mid-season national team games and FIBA, while local sports law in many cases includes possible punishments, is not willing to ask those punishments to be imposed.
The gap between the two sides has never been bigger and the sport will suffer, with the players being on the center of the debate, but not having yet any voice on the matter.