Capital Investment: Burak Goren and Turk Telekom’s new venture / News - Basketnews.com

Credit: Turk Telekom Ankara Credit Turk Telekom Ankara

With the upcoming EuroCup campaign closer on the horizon, BasketNews connected with Turk Telekom's coach Burak Goren to discuss brand new aspirations in the European scene.

From the beginning of the 90s, Turk Telekom became a prominent member of Turkish basketball history. Alongside with Turkish Cup title in 2008, the club was a regular challenger in the Turkish League playoffs, reaching Turkish league finals in 1997 and 2008. After a turbulent period between 2010 and 2018, Turk Telekom rose from the ashes behind the leadership of Burak Goren and his staff. After returning to the domestic scene, Turk Telekom reached the playoff quarterfinals in the Basketball Super League (BSL) and Turkish Cup semi-finals in 2019 and 2020.

Goren is an exemplary story of building a career path that passes through grassroots and youth level basketball, along with many echelons of lower-level basketball towards Basketball Champions League and EuroCup. Ankara native started his career as assistant coach in Buyuk Kolej, TED Ankara Kolejliler and Hacettepe University. Later on, he had successful head coaching experiences at TED Ankara Kolejliler(2014-15) and Petkimspor Aliaga(2016-2017) before bringing Turk Telekom back to the top-level domestic basketball in 2018. Ankara club shifted back to EuroCup for this season with the revamped format of the competition.

Coach, would you like to give a summary of your coaching career? How did you start, and how is it going right now?

I was in the Ankara University Physical Education department, and my academic records were quite good. Actually, I had an intention to go for a sports management career rather than coaching. I had my MA degree and was getting prepared for a PhD, but I started coaching at Buyuk Kolej. Many good players and coaches were recruited by this club. Thanks to Naci Ozeney, whom I worked with many years and who saw my potential in coaching. He encouraged me to dig in and led me to excel in this profession.

I had to go through many struggles, but I strived for success from the very low levels, and during all this time, I sought to develop my knowledge and skills. In basketball coaching, everyone must earn their achievements only by doing their own labor. This is very important for me after all those struggles. Through all those levels of basketball, now I became a EuroCup coach again.

Turk Telekom will play in EuroCup upcoming season. What were the reasons behind the shift from Basketball Champions League to EuroCup?

Considering the rich history and strong background, Turk Telekom accrued a lot of respect from top-level organizations through the years. When we came back to Basketball Super League (BSL) we were directly invited to the EuroCup competition via wildcard. One season later, the Basketball Champions League (BCL) came up with its developmental perspective and showed interest in us. We were by no means the competition's favorites but nevertheless reached success in the regular season. We won 11 of the 14 games in the group stage and eventually advanced to the quarterfinals.

In my opinion, we contributed a lot to BCL in terms of quality and value, as a good brand of basketball. But EuroCup never ceased to show its interest in us, and we could not see the respect and interest from BCL that we deserved. Subsequently, club administrators decided that EuroCup was the right place for us for the development of the club. It is undeniable that BCL has a lot of value; many good clubs, many good players, and coaches are competing there. But we must also not forget that EuroCup has an organic connection with EuroLeague. Everyone in EuroCup has the ambition to play in EuroLeague. Therefore, EuroCup keeps its attractiveness from this perspective.

Group A looks strong: Olympic finalist coach of France, Vincent Collet, recently joined Paris-Levallois. Certainly, there is Partizan with Zeljko Obradovic, who is making a comeback to European basketball.

Partizan made a strong push to the top of Europe with aggressive summer signings; their obvious aim is EuroLeague. Virtus Bologna, another club with big aspirations. But our group has Lokomotiv Kuban, Trento, Badalona, and Paris-Levallois; they are very strong opponents. It is a good challenge. We will try to make the best of every opportunity.

With the new format, there is a heavier load on the shoulders of players, management, and coaches. We will play 18 games during the group stage. This is almost the closed league structure like the EuroLeague. This brings a certain workload and heavy match traffic, pressure. In our minds, we could manage this, as we did in the first EuroCup and, later on, BCL seasons. We will seek good results and good representation for both Ankara and the club.

What is your opinion about the single-game elimination system introduced in EuroCup?

This topic was raised in the coaches' meeting in Barcelona. EuroCup seeks to renovate itself, and they seek to raise the level of excitement. In this respect, they would like to raise the value of the regular season. You play 18 games, but the results will be decided when it comes to the elimination games. Depending on the results, you can have the home advantage or not. The model reminds me of March Madness in the NCAA, with a high level of excitement and a big potential for surprises.

Of course, some people did not approve it, but these decisions are given after long investigations and analysis at the end of the day. We were also involved in these debates. The EuroCup Final game is scheduled to take place just before the EuroLeague Final. This was done to highlight the transitory prospect between EuroCup and EuroLeague. Now the format is settled, and the plan is to go as far as we can go in this format.

Turk Telekom added new players, Harrison, Ellis, Johnson, Perez. What are the challenges of building a new roster?

Reshuffling always comes along with its own challenges and struggles. I am a coach who puts roster stability in primary position. And we partially maintained that stability in the previous seasons after we were promoted to BSL. We had to accept the changes taking place last summer. But we are a medium-level budget club that has to maintain a certain level of success. When you reach that success, however, the players get attention, and it is hard to keep them here in monetary terms and also many other perspectives. At this point, I should say that many of the foreign players that came to our club developed themselves. In the last three years, they made a step further in their careers, moved to upper-quality leagues, like EuroLeague and NBA.

With our roster-building policy, we brought certain opportunities to players stuck between EuroCup and EuroLeague to make a jump for the next level. Before joining us, Moustapha Fall had many injuries in his career and had some unfortunate stints of 5-6 months not playing. Despite the doubtful eyes upon him, he made two signings in two successive summers with different EuroLeague clubs.

Kyle Wiltjer was struggling to unleash his true value. But after arriving here, he found this opportunity. Sam Dekker came here as a 200+ games NBA player but had an unsuccessful season at Kuban and raised doubts. After playing with us, he came back to the NBA with a lucrative contract in Toronto. With this policy, we built a certain level of attractiveness as an organization. We contribute to the players' level and development, help them improve their value.

Many of the foreign players are eager to join Turk Telekom for the reasons I mentioned before. Octavious Ellis was an important EuroLeague player who had significant responsibilities in Olympiacos. The same goes for Aaron Harrison in terms of his role on the roster. Jajuan Johnson had a remarkable season in Bayern. Munich had an intention to keep him, but there came an opportunity window. I have a firm belief in Alex Perez's potential as well. His true value is not reflected in the previous season at Fenerbahce, but his earlier seasons at Banvit and Bahcesehir were closer to his actual skills.

Besides, Tyler Ennis will join us in 10 days. Last year, he had another big injury in our game against Galatasaray, and his season ended prematurely. The important thing about our club was to renew his contract right after he got such an injury. Such an attitude showed him our respect and his prospects in the club. We have a team with greater depth and enormous potential.

Which one of your former players have impressed you the most, or you contributed to their game the most?

I am a coach who wants to learn from everyone, and I will keep learning with these experiences. Certainly, we learn many things from coaches, but that is not the only thing: we also learn from the players. Honestly speaking, I learned a lot from my players as well. For example, Sylven Landersberg left a great impression on me with his commitment and his winning character. Moustapha Fall, in his very deep silence, never questions your decisions, concentrating on his own job in the best way possible. In the beginning, we were concerned about him: Fall is a 2.18-meter, and we had to maintain his comfort in the long travels. But he turned out to be a player who was on the court Wednesday and gave his everything in the next training on Friday, after 14-15 hour travel.

In the Basketball Champions League quarterfinal game against Dijon, you lost at the last moment. Were there any regrets about any of your decisions?

I don't like to think "what if" and I don't regret my decisions. We put in a good effort, but we could have been better. In fact, the story goes deeper. If the pandemic did not happen, we would have played against Dijon and had the homecourt advantage.

It was a tough matchup of equal opponents. For example, their pick-and-roll defense was pretty good, but they were having trouble defending the low-post area, which we used as an advantage. They often used double teams, and we were very good at finding connections with outside players once we delivered the ball inside. All in all, it was a one-possession game. That was a very important achievement and also a great experience.

Burak Goren deems himself a happy coach. Being promoted to the head-coaching position at the age of 39, he is 45 and counts himself lucky to have worked with all those players. He knows that being in Ankara and not Istanbul could put his achievements away from the spotlights. However, he is not walking alone. The general manager Cenk Duraklar and the club believe in him and the core squad of assistant coaches, unchanged in the last five years: Ozgur Adiguzel, Candost Volkan, Ilter Turkmen. Only time will tell what the new season will bring to them, but there are many reasons to be hopeful for the capital club.

Credit Turk Telekom Ankara Like what we are doing? You can express your gratitude here.