Leading European Federations Condemn EuroLeague's Attack On National Teams

FIBA's national federations which have clubs participating in the EuroLeague (Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Russia, Serbia, Spain and Turkey) met on Thursday to discuss issues relating to the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 Qualifiers. Following the meeting, the nine federations issued the following joint statement: "Clubs and national team competitions can co-exist throughout the year, as it happened until 2003 in basketball and is currently the case in other team sports. ... We condemn EuroLeague Commercial Assets' (ECA's) refusal to change two game-days as a commercially-driven attack to the national teams, which endangers their existence and jeopardises their qualification chances to the FIBA Basketball World Cup and Olympic Games. The national teams remain the locomotives of basketball worldwide. ... We remind the clubs participating in our national championships that they have rights as much as they have obligations. We condemn any direct or indirect pressures from clubs on players" (FIBA).