The Turkish players of Besiktas with a huge contribution in the victory over Brindisi

Yesterday, Besiktas Istanbul hammered the visitors from Happy Casa Brindisi with an unbelievable margin (96-67), proving they still have a chance to the BasketballCL playoffs. In spite of having only 3 foreigners, Besiktas dominated the game from the first quarter, beneficiating by the huge help of the local players. Ismet Akpinar, Oguz Savas, Samet Geyik, Burak Can Yldizli and so on were putting an amazing effort in the win.

Even if many people wouldn’t give a chance to the host team, because Besiktas recently parted ways with the Americans Jordan Theodore and James McAdoo, the Turkish squad showed to entire Europe that homegrown players are pure gold. During the last years, the club introduced a lot the local players, giving each of them 15-25 minutes on the court, when it was possible. Many haters said that they were weak, without experience, wasting the ball and they won’t confirm, but now we are all convinced that giving them credit during the last seasons was the best strategy.

In the yesterday’s game, the Turkish players of Besiktas scored together 50 points from 96, while the whole team of Brindisi scored 67 with only 9 points from the Italian players (Raphael Gaspardo – 5 and Antonio Ianuzzi – 4). We had the best prof that the future of the European basketball will rely on the homegrown players, not in bringing in too many mercenaries who are staying with the club only for stats and big money. Investing in local is the key to sustainable growth, no matter if we speak about agriculture, economy or sports.

The Turkish players are developing every season thanks to a very good measure taken by the Basketball Federation to reduce the foreigners’ number in the domestic league to only 5 per team. The same thing is encouraged by FIBA Europe and this strategy is giving the well-deserved results.

Photo: Basketball Champions League

Gratian Cormos

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