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Although fans especially in Europe are enjoying exciting basketball competitions between the different European teams, it has come at the expense of some players.
During the EuroBasket Group Stage, five games are played in a seven-day span for teams. It is a brutal stretch for any team, especially with players who are not used to playing games that frequently without giving the body time to rest.
Dallas Mavericks Luka Doncic and his Slovenian teammates lost to Bosnia and Herzegovina 97-93. It was a bit of a surprise given the fact Slovenia came into the game on an 11-game winning streak, including their undefeated 9-0 run during the 2017 EuroBasket.
“We’re going to play four games in five days,” Doncic said after Slovenia’s practice Monday (9/5). “Yesterday, basically we had two games in 24 hours. Yes, this should change for everybody. Everybody is doing the same. Everybody has less rest. It’s a problem because of injuries you know. More injuries can happen. Especially the clubs wouldn’t be very glad.”
Doncic has a point. There is a reason NBA players don’t play all 82-games in the regular season anymore, even when they’re healthy. As all athletes know, they need to get enough recovery time, or the chance to get injured increases.
Danilo Gallinari of Italy tore his ACL during a World Cup qualifier, and he is already expected to miss a chunk of games for the Boston Celtics. Giannis Antetokounmpo of Greece rested in the September 5 game against Great Britain. If FIBA staggered more of the games further out, some hopeful fans with tickets to one of these games would not have to worry about their favorite players sitting out due to conditioning.
Fellow NBA Player Wants Changes from FIBA
Doncic’s response about the heavy number of games in a short span were in agreeing with France’s star Evan Fournier. The Frenchman talked about how intense it would get because of the back-to-backs.
“It’s the EuroBasket and we have back-to-backs. Back-to-backs are very hard. And back-to-backs in the NBA and back-to-back in the EuroBasket is two different things,” Fournier told Eurohoops. “There’s less games here so it’s more intense. When you play at 20:30 you usually sleep around 3:00. It’s a really big challenge. To be fair, it’s the same thing for everyone. It would be great if FIBA changed that to allow us to have more rest in between games.”
It should not be a surprise if more athletes come out and want more staggered games. FIBA may be forced to honor this request in the future, or risk top players missing more games to avoid potential injuries.
FIBA Has Taken A lot of Backlash Lately
Only a few days have transpired since the start of the 2022 Euroleague, but it has been full of drama.
It all started when the bus driver for Slovenia failed to pick up the team to go to the arena to play their first game. This caused Goran Dragic to call out FIBA on social media, and the backlash got so intense, that FIBA released a statement to apologize.
Another situation occurred between Turkey and Georgia, where Sixers wing Forkan Korkmaz was attacked by some players from the Georgian team after Korkmaz was heading to his locker room after his ejection.
Drama seems to follow wherever basketball takes place in the world. Hopefully, there are fewer distractions as the games get more serious and competitive once group play ends.
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