FIBA – International basketball deals with lockout

MADRID (FIBA) - Basketball's leading players would like to help their national teams qualify for the Olympics this summer but the NBA lockout is making it difficult for them to compete.
 
Dirk Nowitzki, Pau Gasol and Manu Ginobili are just three of the NBA stars who are hoping to represent their countries.
 
Gasol and Ginobili committed to Spain and Argentina, respectively, a long time ago.
 
Spain will compete at the EuroBasket and Argentina will host the FIBA Americas Championship.

And Nowitzki, the man who led the Dallas Mavericks to their first NBA title last month, has also firmly declared his intention to play for Germany again in the hope of making it to London.
 
"That's why I definitely want to play," he said to www.spiegel.de.
 
"I don't want to ruin the others' chances of participating in the Olympics.
 
"To qualify, we have to finish at least sixth at the European championships."
 
Should Germany not reach the Final of the EuroBasket but end up third, fourth, fifth or sixth, they would be invited to the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament for the second straight time.
 
Nowitzki led Germany to one of three spots on offer to the Beijing Games at the 2008 FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament.
 
Before any of the NBA players suit up, though, they must have adequate insurance.
 
One of the consequences of the lockout is that the burden of insuring players falls on the federations.
 
National teams in the FIBA Americas, FIBA Europe, FIBA Africa, FIBA Asia and FIBA Oceania are all being affected.
                                                                                                                                                               
Cameroon's biggest star, Luc Mbah a Moute, doesn't believe he will be able to play at the Afrobasket in Madagascar.
 
The country needs Mbah a Moute as they go after the title that would secure their Olympic qualification but when asked if his basketball federation might cover the cost of his insurance, Mbah a Moute said to FIBA.com: "No, I don't think they would pay that money for a single player."
 
Poland had great cause for celebration when Marcin Gortat confirmed his willingness to compete in Lithuania at the EuroBasket at a press conference on Monday.
 
But he did so with a big proviso.
 
"I'll be playing in the Polish squad," Gortat said.
 
"The condition, however, is that the Polish Basketball Federation pay the insurance which the Phoenix Suns provide me but doesn't apply during the lockout."
 
The lockout has been felt Down Under, where Basketball Australia announced almost immediately that their Milwaukee Bucks center Andrew Bogut is "unlikely to suit up" for the Boomers when they face the New Zealand Tall Blacks in September's FIBA Oceania Championship.
 
"The NBA lockout has made his insurance issues impossible for Basketball Australia and Andrew to feel comfortable that his contract would be fully insured in the event of injury," Australia coach Brett Brown said.
 
In China, however, it seems the lockout won't be keeping NBA big man Yi Jianlian out of the FIBA Asia Championship.
 
China's national team coach Bob Donewald, when asked about Yi, said to FIBA.com: "We're a little bit of a different animal over here …
 
"These kids will play. They're not asked to play. They actually want to play. They're hungry to play.
 
"In China, the players play."
 
In Great Britain, the national team is preparing to play in the EuroBasket for the second straight time.
 
Will Luol Deng, who missed EuroBasket 2009 through injury, get the insurance he needs to play?
 
"We're obviously trying to solve the insurance issue," Chris Spice, the performance director of British Basketball said.
 
Britain have done everything in their power to help Deng play before.
 
"Each year, we're faced with another insurance issue with Luol," Spice said, "from him being on the (NBA) exclusion list, which we were never happy about and still don't think he should have been on it."
 
MetLife was the NBA's insurer which covered the top 150 salaries in the league under a group policy and the company had the right to exclude 14 high-risk players every year.
 
After Deng signed a big contract extension with the Bulls in 2008, which at the time was the fourth-highest contract in the NBA in terms of outstanding money, MetLife used an MRI scan taken from several months earlier when he'd hurt his back and missed three games and excluded him from the coverage.
 
As a consequence, British Basketball had to pay a lot of additional money to insure Deng so he could play in Division A in 2008.
 
"Every year something comes at us and we somehow end up fighting through to a solution," Spice said.
 
"There is a conference going on this weekend with the insurance issue so we're hoping we can see our way through that and Luol can play."
 
Coaches want to coach and not get involved in the lockout-related insurance dilemma.
 
"From the sporting point of view, the lockout makes it easier because the FIBA Americas Championship will be the only thing on the players' minds (and not the NBA) in these months," Argentina coach Julio Lamas said to FIBA.com.
 
The Argentina fans expect to see their golden generation of players in Mar del Plata, where the event will be staged.
 
Ginobili, Luis Scola, Andres Nocioni and Carlos Delfino all played on the gold-medal winning Argentina team at the 2004 Olympics.
 
"To us, it (the lockout) makes it difficult because the insurance of the players," Lamas said.
 
"I trust that the authorities of the federation are going to solve this and we will have the four players."
 
The man trying to make it happen for Argentina is the confederation president German Vaccaro.
 
Vaccaro has flown to Madrid this week and has met with Spanish Basketball Federation president Jose Luis Saez.
 
In a lengthy interview with FIBA.com, Vaccaro said: "In our case, I´m optimistic that Argentina will have all of their players to play in the tournament we are hosting…
 
"There are several fronts we are tackling in order to find a solution."
 
Vaccaro says federations simply do not have the resources to pay the insurance on their own.
 
"We know it´s a lot of money, but we are not sure exactly," Vaccaro said.

"What we have heard is that a player who has a three-year contract and is not one of the highest earners but an average one, if we had to insure him for the three years, we would be talking about 300,000 US dollars.

"So we are talking about an amount that would be unreachable for any federation."
 
Like Argentina, Spain rely heavily on NBA players Pau Gasol (Los Angeles Lakers) and his brother, Marc (Memphis), Jose Calderon (Toronto), Rudy Fernandez (Dallas) and Ricky Rubio (Minnesota).
 
Saez is hopeful his players will compete.
 
"That is my desire and that is what we are working for," he said in an interview with FIBA.com.
 
"We have worked on this in a serious and rigorous manner for several months from the moment we knew there was the possibility of the NBA lockout.
 
"I hope and I wish that we will be able to have all of our players available from the first day of training.
 
"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."
 
On June 30, the night the lockout was announced, French Basketball Federation (FFBB) President Jean-Pierre Siutat said to FIBA.com: "The only difference between a lockout and a no lockout situation is that we have to pay more insurance ...
 
"We are currently trying to raise the necessary funds to cover the additional costs and are thus trying to find somebody who can help us in France - the government or some alternative sponsor. Considering that we have six players from the NBA, we're talking about a substantial amount of money."
 
FIBA