By Nikos Varlas/ varlas@eurohoops.net
After the basketball boom in Turkey in 2010, when the FIBA World championship was held in the country, clubs with successful football teams renewed their interest in basketball. Such is the case of Besiktas, a team with great sport tradition and great support in Istanbul due to football. On the other hand there are teams completely devoted to basketball, like Anadolu Efes, with a declining fan base, because of the “invasion” of clubs with big football oriented fan bases.
Those two very different teams are clashing in the Turkish league finals, but very soon they could be merged. There have been ongoing talks about this possibility for very long and it’s something that has happened before in Turkey, in the case of Ulker and Fenerbahce. Until this season, Besiktas that won the Eurochallenge and the Turkish cup, had the fan base, but not the team. Efes had always a good team, but just 1.200 home fans in the crucial Game 4 of the semifinals against Banvit. It’s a match made in heaven and if there is no hostility in the finals between the two interested parts, the merge could be announced almost immediately after the end of the season.