By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
A mid season press conference usually doesn’t produced big news, but on Wednesday Maccabi Tel Aviv president Simon Mizrahi and Euroleague CEO Jordi Bertomeu once more clarified that the Euroleague clubs are not willing to accept the proposed new calendar by FIBA.
Euroleague, like NBA, Liga Endesa and other leagues around Europe are not willing to break their seasons in order for national teams to play qualification games. “We are not prepared to accept the FIBA Calendar 2017 as it does not make any sense to play without having the best players on the court, and so we have discussed counter-proposals together with FIBA”, said Bertomeu. According to Eurohoops sources, the issue was discussed during the recent general assembly of the teams in Istanbul and that’s the unanimous position of every Euroleague club.
Also Bertomeu admitted that he had a recent meeting with the new owner of Hapoel Jerusalem Ori Allon – a club part owned also by Amare Stoudemire – about the possibility of a second Israeli team entering the competition, probably with a wild card. However, this is something that will not be addressed in the near future. Euroleague is always ready to expand, there were questions made about a bigger Top16, a new format with more than 24 teams and even about the possibility of two Euroleague games for each team every week, but all those subjects at this point are not imminent plants. As Bertomeu said “if our teams want to make changes in the future, we will have to find the solutions”.