Conflicting schedule: coaches ask for the end of conflict between FIBA and EuroLeague / News - Basketnews.com

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"Killing the players", "Copying the NBA", "It's too much", are only a few of the statements recently made by some of the top European coaches. The conflict between FIBA and EuroLeague and a hyper-condensed schedule are creating a lot of damages, and the coaches are becoming increasingly unsettled with the current state of things.

With the COVID pandemic still lingering over the entire professional sports world, it looks like the top decision-makers in the basketball world are becoming deaf to the critics and suggestions coming from the players, coaching staff, and executives.

The number of the games is increasing constantly but the quality of those matches is going down, players have virtually no time to rest, national teams are forced to use very improvised rosters to play during the season. An unsustainable situation.

Over the course of the last few months, several among the top European coaches in the game expressed their frustration, pushing FIBA and EuroLeague to find a common solution to the current impasse.

One of the most vocal on the matter has been Ettore Messina, head coach and president of basketball operations of Armani Exchange Milan. In 2020, in the middle of the first wave of the pandemic, Ettore Messina had written an open letter to the main decision-makers of European basketball, asking to find a common solution to finish the season in the safest way possible for the players and all the people involved in the clubs.

This season, at the beginning of February, after a hard-fought win against Crvena Zvezda, coach Messina reiterated his point.

"Last season, in the middle of the pandemic, I wrote a public letter, asking the top decision-makers to find a common solution. The main point was to find a solution for the schedule because a lot of players were suffering injuries and the quality of the games was going down", coach Messina said.

"When I wrote that letter, everyone got mad. I don’t know the solution but I hope that in the coming future there’ll be the will to sit at a table and find a solution", the Italian coach added.

After the game against Zalgiris Kaunas, coach Messina told Basketnews that, so far, he hasn’t received any kind of answer from basketball authorities.

"Last year when I wrote the letter everyone got mad. This year they ignored me, which is fine", the coach said to our website.

Lithuanian head coach Sarunas Jasikevicius recently criticized the conflict between FIBA and EuroLeague, saying that the current situation is killing the players and that no one is doing anything to prevent that.

"The conflict between FIBA and EuroLeague must come to an end", coach Jasikevicius said at the beginning of February, before the game against Panathinaikos. "We’re killing the players, there are too many injuries. We sent complaints but EuroLeague ignores us".

Bayern Munich head coach Andrea Trinchieri has been another relevant figure who criticized the current schedule of the EuroLeague and the format of the competition, which, according to the Italian coach, doesn’t give the teams and the players enough chances to fix their situation in the standings.

"We’re trying to copy the NBA but you cannot just copy things without having the same stuff", coach Trinchieri said recently. "NBA has a regular season with 82 games, so you have 82 opportunities to fix your ranking after a loss. Out of 30 teams, 16 go to the playoffs. Here we have a regular season with 34 games and out of 18 teams, only 8 go to the playoffs".

"So it’s very difficult to have quality, nice plays, quick basketball playing every 48 hours", coach Trinchieri continued to explain. "The importance of a single game is not comparable to the NBA. In the NBA you can lose games because you have other 81 opportunities, here every game is a struggle and this is the result: injured players and low-scoring games".

CSKA Moscow head coach Dimitris Itoudis had a similar view to the one of coach Trinchieri when he spoke to our website. The Greek head coach is convinced that the EuroLeague format has to change, creating a competition with more teams and more games to be played.

"Each and every game almost looks like a final for each and every team. It doesn’t matter who do you play with", coach Itoudis told Basketnews. "And that’s not healthy, it’s good for the competition, for sure".

“What I’m saying is that maybe we need to think about a different format. We need to add some more teams. So if it’s divided into two groups for the regular season, there’s a little bit more time to make adjustments to play different players. So even if you have some defeats, that doesn’t cost you down the stretch”, the CSKA Moscow head coach added.

“I’m asking for more games, yes, but then to compensate for that, the team should play a little bit less of the games in the domestic leagues”, Itoudis finished.

Legendary Serbian head coach Zeljko Obradovic agrees with Itoudis’ position that clubs should play fewer games in the domestic leagues, especially the clubs that play in EuroLeague and other top European competitions.

In an interview with L’Equipe, Obradovic shared an interesting but at the same time controversial idea.

“There are too many games between International windows and clubs. It’s necessary that teams participating in a closed league only join the playoffs of their national championships so that sponsors and televisions are found there”, the Partizan head coach said.

The reigning EuroLeague champion head coach Ergin Ataman also expressed all his frustration regarding the situation between EuroLeague and FIBA. The Turkish head coach said that, due to the current situation, several players have to choose between their clubs and their national teams, which is very unfair.

“This situation between EuroLeague and FIBA is ridiculous”, coach Ataman said after the game played by Efes against ASVEL. “Every player would like to play in the national team. Therefore it could be the case that Fenerbahce and Efes players have to play 4 games in 6 days. This has been the case for the last two years. This is just ridiculous”.

“The Euroleague season was canceled back in 2020 because of COVID”, coach Ataman continued. “But now they’re forcing players to play 4-5 games in 6 days. The player’s health is on the line here”.

From whatever side you look at the current situation, it’s clear that a solution has to be found sooner rather than later.

The schedule is a mess, the players are forced to play multiple games in just a few days and have very little rest, not only during the season but also between a season and one another, coaches are not happy and they keep complaining.

The quality of the games is going down because there’s not enough time to rest and every single game becomes a battle with no possibility to rest some players. FIBA and EuroLeague, though, don’t look very close to finding an agreement. Will the pressure coming from the coaches improve the situation? Only time will tell

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