Gence BC is based in Ganja, Azerbaijan, the country\u2019s second-largest city after Baku, and plays its home games at Ganja Sports Palace. And one of European basketball\u2019s most unusual stories of the season has now emerged from the Azerbaijani club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After Gence\u2019s FIBA Europe Cup loss to Esenler Erokspor, head coach Martin Knezevic claimed on social media that five players had been injured in an elevator accident at the team hotel and still had to play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The club then publicly denied his version. Gence confirmed there had been an elevator malfunction but said it had nothing to do with player injuries. Four of the five players named by Knezevic played, while Bakari Camara was reportedly left out for tactical reasons. The club also said it had never asked FIBA to postpone the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gence issued Knezevic an official warning and stated that another similar incident would lead to the termination of his contract. From Ganja, one of Azerbaijan\u2019s historic cities, comes one of the strangest basketball stories of the European season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bizarre story from Azerbaijan as Gence BC publicly denies coach Martin Knezevic\u2019s claims about an elevator accident involving five players<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":548893,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-548895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiba-europe-cup"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2026\/10\/Gence.webp","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":548896,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548895\/revisions\/548896"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548895"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=548895"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=548895"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=548895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}