Banvit – paying the low-cost
They don’t share the last spot of TBSL with anybody because they are unique and it seems to be one of the most affected teams by the economic crisis from Turkey. Did you already guess? It’s about Banvit.
Other teams like Yesilgiresun or Trabzonspor were already waived from the Turkish basketball when their national money called “Lira” dropped at the half of the value. Despite all the problems, Banvit is still in the 1st league and they compete as well in the Basketball Champions League. Their solution was the low-cost. Trying to spend less cash, they fired two foreigners, Serbian center Stefan Bircevic and American guard Marcus Thornton. And only after a couple of weeks they have replaced them with just one American McKenzie Moore, an amazing player, but who couldn’t save the squad from the last position on the Turkish championship.
I hope this break of two weeks for the National Team games will bring a new player for Banvit because if not, the situation will be tough. They are now at 1-6 in TBSL and if you can imagine, last week they’ve lost even with the worst team: Istanbul BBSK, another low-cost squad who try to survive on short money.
Banvit was a popular figure of the decade in the Turkish basketball: they won the regular season in 2014, the Cup in 2017 and they were the President Cup finalist last year. And now this tradition of big achievements is in danger. Low-cost doesn’t seem to be the solution for performance.
Graţian Cormoş, info@brainbasketball.net
