Turkish Basketball Federation took an excellent decision!
After reducing the number of foreigners allowed in the Turkish league from 6 to 5 a couple of years ago, the Turkish Basketball Federation came up with another brilliant decision. From now on Shane Larkin and Scottie Wilbekin will compete as foreign players, not as Turkish players. And it seems very logical to compete with other foreign players, not to occupy the spots of the young local talents.
The decision of the TBF came after both players were not available this summer for the national team of Turkey. Then, why to be considered as a Turkish player in the national championship? Only to give another advantage to Fenerbahce and Efes when they compete with other Turkish teams that don’t have in their roster, naturalized players? The whole idea of naturalizing players everywhere in Europe is a fake! It means only to give the spots of the home-grown players from Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and so on to Americans. It is not fair and it gives room to cheat the spirit of the competition.
In the national championship of Europe, the priority has to be the home-grown players, from the local youth academies that need minutes on the court in order to grow. If you want to produce players like Alperen Sengun, just to give an example – you have to have the main focus on their development, not to naturalize and naturalize more and more Americans that will steal the spots of their own home-grown guys!
This decision could be a precedent for all the European federations in order to consider the naturalised players as foreigners in their domestic league!
The article was written by Gratian Cormos, a Romanian journalist, book writer, life coach and mentor currently living in Barcelona, Spain.
If you are interested in collaborating with his website brainbasketball.net, to publish articles, interviews or other features related to basketball or for a marketing proposal, feel free to contact Gratian Cormos by Whatsapp or Telegram at this Spanish number: +34 612414486.
Photo credit: Basketbol Gunlugu
