NBA lockout affecting FIBA and its tournaments – Basketball Update
As the qualifying rounds for the 2012 London Olympics are drawing near, many foreign players in NBA have shown the desire to represent their country in a bid to seal the Olympic birth.
However, the lockout is emerging as the biggest hurdle in their path. Due to work stoppage in the league for an indefinite period, the players would not get insurance for playing overseas and thus the whole burden falls on the
basketball association of the respective countries.
Among players, who are keen to represent their national sides are the likes of Dallas Mavericks super star Dirk Nowitzki, who plays for Germany; Pau Gasol, who plays for Spain and Manu Ginobili, who is committed with Argentina.
Spain and Germany will participate in Euro-Basket, while Argentina is host plus contender in the FIBA Americas Championship that will commence from 30th August, 2011.
Given so many high profile players, featuring in the American league, this situation is especially very tough for Argentina and its Basketball Confederation. German Vaccaro, the president of the Argentinean Basketball Association
has been actively taking part to sort the issue. However, there are just 14 days left before the host country begins its training camp and there is still no solution in the pipeline.
Argentina is relying on stars like Carlos Delfino, Luis Scola, Andres Nocioni and Ginobili to help them qualify for the Olympics. Just like Argentina, Spain can also lose its stars like Pau, his brother, Marc Gasol, , Jose Calderon,
Rudy Fernandez and Ricky Rubio because of insurance dilemma.
Spanish Basketball Federation president Jose Luis Saez highlighted the issue, "First, the players have given their availability and secondly, we have two channels available, one is to get the insurance and the other to get the
finance needed for this to happen."
The problem just doesn’t with Argentina and Spain. There are players like Marcin Gortat and Luc Mbah a Moute, who are also willing to play from their respective teams. Gortat has already declared that he will play for Poland, but
only if the Polish Basketball Federation arranges insurance for him.
Then there are teams like Britain and France, who have high quality players like Luol Deng, Tony Parker etc at stake. The question here is whether the respective federation will be able to spend such a huge amount of money just
for one tournament.
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