Slovenia wants Igor Kokoskov back, reveals talks with European masterminds / News - Basketnews.com

The President of the Slovenian Basketball Federation has confirmed that the national team is interested in renewing its partnership with Igor Kokoskov. However, Matej Erjavec clarified that Kokoskov would not be the head coach due to his commitments in the NBA.

Credit: AP - Scanpix Credit AP - Scanpix

The President of the Slovenian Basketball Federation, Matej Erjavec, confirmed that the country's national team wants to renew cooperation with European gold medalist Igor Kokoskov.

Erjavec assured Ekipa24 that the rumors about Kokoskov's returning idea to the Slovenian national team were correct, only this time, the Brooklyn Nets assistant would have a different role.

"We would like to have Kokoskov with us," Erjavec said. "This rumor is absolutely true, but it was misinterpreted that we would like to see him as a head coach. We can't even do that, because we need a coach who, in addition to the World Cup, could also lead the national team in FIBA windows. An NBA coach practically cannot do that.

"We want to have Igor with us, we would like to go to the upcoming World Cup in the best possible lineup, both in terms of players and coaches. If we find a compromise so that this can be done, we definitely want to have him on the national team," Erjavec added.

The federation president also talked about prominent European basketball names who could have ended up coaching the Slovenian NT ahead of the hiring of Aleksander Sekulic.

"Three years ago, before Sekulic, we were looking for a head coach. We had serious talks with [Dimitris] Itoudis and [Xavi] Pascual and we were close to an agreement," Erjavec revealed.

"The idea was to put the steering wheel in the hands of a foreigner after the failure when we did not qualify for the FIBA World Cup 2019. Then we found a solution in Sekulic, who was not a very well-known coach back then, but today everything is different."

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