By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
In a recent interview on MozzartSport, Nikola Kalinic opened up about lots of current issues, in regards to EuroBasket and players in Europe.
First, he addressed Nikola Jokic’s decision not to participate in the Eurobasket, with the following: “I’m neither judging him, nor supporting him. I simply have no comments. Not at this moment, maybe some other time. That’s his choice and that’s it.”
As for whether he has thought twice before joining the national team of Serbia, Kalinic was honest:
“I’ve been thinking about it many times. I can not lie. We all think about it after 80 games in the season, after I do not know how many injuries. Of course, you think like ‘Come on, why should I risk my health and not get anything out of it.’ I say this for the first time publicly – you can freely put it, now I openly ask all those who criticize us – who would come and spent two months of his life each year with the National Team. Here, I ask now – how many people in Serbia would spend two months of their lives doing something for the state? To go to work as it used to be a working action, to build roads, buildings, anything. How many would have worked for two months for nothing? Many players have been injured so far, even Stefan Markovic, whom some have condemned, perhaps because of having been in the team for so long that he injured his back. Despite it being a huge honor, you risk your job, career.”
A while ago, Kalinic pointed out the problems faced by players in Europe and how the situation should take a different route in order for them to continue playing in the Old Continent: “I’m glad people understood what I was talking about. Maybe I did not say the best, or I did not list all the problems. It might even be necessary to put everything on paper … But I see that many players have recognized what I wrote. We can change a lot. I read the comments of people in style: ‘Why do they even complain when they have so much money and stuff’. All right, that is all nice. But we should not compare ourselves to the worst and say that we are better than them. We need to be compared to the NBA, where players have ten times more of those millions in accounts, but also five times better conditions.”