As revealed by www.gbbasketball.net on Friday, Andy Betts is the first of Team GB's European players to be inked for next season. Betts has been rewarded for a fine spell at Aris who he joined in January and was given an Honourable Mention by the influential Eurobasket.com in their Greek League awards this week.Signing for a major club means that Betts should not be under any pressure to withdraw from the GB team. Betts highlighted such demands from clubs in an interview with Basketball 24/7 last year. Demands that he has resisted both for GB and previously with England.
Whilst it is against FIBA Europe rules for European clubs to prevent players representing their national teams in FIBA competitions, clubs have found ways and means of getting players to seriously consider opting out of national duty - except of course when the national team is the club's country of origin.
Last year, Mike Lenzly and Dan Clark both of whom had a strong shot at making the final twelve dropped out before training camp. Lenzly had just signed the biggest deal of his career in Italy and Clark had not broken through as a regular at Estudiantes. Under those circumstances both players were in a vulnerable position - where their clubs could persuade them that participating in a Eurobasket qualifying campaign was not in their career interests.
Now that Britain have made Eurobasket will our programme get the respect that Betts has demanded? If foreign clubs do continue to put pressure on players to opt-out will all be able to resist now that a place on a Finals roster is at stake?
No comments:
Post a Comment