By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
Bostjan Nachbar, the managing director of ELPA, talked to “Sportske Novosti” about the current situation of European basketball, the changes in the financial rules of the EuroLeague and also the ongoing issue of the EuroLeague players’ inability to compete in the winter FIBA windows due to the scheduling conflict.
According to Nachbar, that’s an issue that should be solved, but for the moment ELPA, while open to dialogue with everyone, has not decided on a court of action.
The reason for that is that even the players are divided: “The most important thing for ELPA is to have its own, specific view as an organization for everything that happens. Since we don’t have it at this moment (and never had it until now ), it wouldn’t be smart to raise our voices. The players themselves, and we learned that by talking with them, don’t have one specific view. Some of them wanted to play in the qualifiers, others didn’t. Some said that they felt pressure not to play. There’s no one specific view. So the smartest thing to do it to wait. However, our doors are open to every issue. it will be ideal to be able to solve this problem”.
It has to be noted that according to many translations of the original text, Bostjan Nachbar was quoted saying that the pressure mentioned come from the clubs. Eurohoops contacted him and he clarified that he was referring to the pressure created by the whole messy situation of the conflicting calendars.
And in the near future, ELPA will also have a voice on the matter of the windows, as Nachbar clarified: “The focus for ELPA in its first year of operating was mainly on establishing strong association and achieving some major improvements for the players, which we both did. Official conversation with the players about the FIBA windows has not been done yet, but we expect to do so in the near future.”