Euroleague wants to complete the season and is considering a few plans to finish the top European competition despite the coronavirus pandemic.
Chief Operations Office Ed Scott spoke with El Pais about the few options EuroLeague is considering.
“The first option is to resume the competition and each team plays in its arena with the same schedule, if we still have time to do that.
The second option is to play all the remaining games but condensing them, with more weeks with double rounds.
The third option, if for healthy reasons it is impossible to play in the arenas of each team, is to reunite all the teams in one city with one or two arenas.
The last option is to modify the format of the competition to end it faster.”
The idea of EuroLeague is to have a two-week “preseason” before resuming games.
“The players, coaches and staffs will have to report in three days, have a mandatory two-week self-isolation and start a two-week preseason to be in shape to resume the season.
We would need one month, how the NBA worked during the lockout in 2011-2012.”.
“We are not considering only one city for this “format” like Eurobasket or FIBA Basketball World Cup. If we want to play all the remaining games we’d need two arenas. In Europe there are enough city with first class arenas and hotels. No city is finalist so far” Scott continued.
El Pais mentions Istanbul, Moscow and Athens as possibile cities to host EuroLeague.
“The negative part about playing in one city are the increase of the costs but we will be able to check closely the health of each participants limiting contacts with other people. We would need five weeks to complete the competition” Scott added.
EuroLeague could restart late in May and finish in the first two weeks of July.
Eurobasket (76 games) and FIBA Basketball World Cup (92 games) are usually played in three weeks.
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