The EuroChallenge Championship Curse: What of Beşiktaş' future?
In this second piece of a two-part series, sportswriter/commentator Uygar Karaca again considers the EuroChallenge Championship Curse, with special reference to this year's champions, Beşiktaş; unfortunately for the Eagles, Karaca feels a distressing amount of déjà vu…
In this article, I will try to answer the question as to whether Beşiktaş Milangaz fits into the framework of the "EuroChallenge Championship Curse." Just to reminder for readers: A few days ago, I compiled a list of teams who won the FIBA EuroChallenge trophy and what happened to them thereafter. Many of these team's fates were not very nice and unfortunately, one can fairly claim that Beşiktaş is walking a similar path.
First, let's summarize the last five to six years of Beşiktaş basketball. The basketball sector of the club was founded as an offshoot of the famous "Black Eagles" football team. The hoops team's best result in modern times was its unexpected appearance in the TBL finals at the end of 2004-05. The next year, Cola Turka came aboard as Beşiktaş basketball sponsor.
In the 2007-2008 season, president Yıldırım Demirören was perhaps bored and decided to find success with an expensive squad. The coach was again Ergin Ataman and players like Kaya Peker, Preston Schumpert, Sinan Güler, Sandro Nicevic, Predrag Drobnjak, Rick Apodaca and Christian Dalmau were hired – and this would be the true beginning of the budget problems that still effect the team today. In that season, Beşiktaş managed to reach the Eurocup Final Eight and lost against Galatasaray in overtime thanks to a Cüneyt Erden shot and lost against Turk Telekom in the TBL semifinals. There were rumors that the club did not manage to play well due to lack of payment to players.
In subsequent years, the headlines filling with the financial troubles of Beşiktaş did not cease. One article released in March 2010 revealed a revolt: Players complained of not receiving pay for three months and refused to join team in training.
In an open letter from the same season, captain Haluk Yıldırım spoke out on how his faithful and admirable teammates played on despite the financial difficulties – and the situation with Beşiktaş' handball, volleyball and women's basketball teams was even worse. It seems like there has always been money for the football team to bring players and some foreigners but not for domestic ones…
For the 2010-2011 season, Allen Iverson came to Beşiktaş despite all the problems and last summer, the partnership with Cola Turka ended; the club, with tons of debt, desperately searched for a new sponsor. Many companies stayed away from financial support perhaps because of suspicions that any benefits gained would be greater than costs, or maybe the inability to assess how the provided financial resources would be used was a factor. In the end, the crises ended when someone was found: Milangaz.
Milangaz is a liquid gas company within the Demirören Holding company network. What this meant was that the president himself, Yıldırım Demirören, was involved in the funding process of the basketball team. This was some dangerous: The financial report announced in Februay 2012 revealed that the club, as a whole, had net debts of around €300 million, with one-third owed to Demirören.
Luckily, before he left his post to become Turkish Football Federation president with a mission of saving football from the recent infamous match-fixing scandal, Demirören declared that he is ready to write off the money that the club owes him with one caveat: He'll do so only if his successors can manage the same or, in other words, give money to the club as a gift. Of course, one must be truly rich to do so and it is therefore almost impossible for the clause to be fulfilled. In practical terms, the club still owes huge money to the former president.
One thing that grabs attention about Beşiktaş JK is the list of players who had monetary issues with the club before departing. In order to receive their due wages, many formally filing complaint with FIBA. FIBA employs a process called the "basketball arbitration tribunal" (BAT) in which a committee made up of lawyers and legal experts decides in salary disputes. Here you can find the BAT rulings since 2008 and by clicking, you can see how frequently the name Beşiktaş appears.
Indeed. Interesting to note that last such dispute was ruled on in just mid-March of this year, with Lithuanian women's team player Iveta Salkauske to (finally) receive around €27,000 from the club – and the financial woes continue… – Ed.
Players including Sandro Nicevic, Ana Dabovic, Brian Dyke, Dubravka Dacic, Marque Perry, Sandra Mandir, Fyodor Likholitov, Iveta Salkauske and some agencies did not get their promised payments and called FIBA to intervene. Moreover, Yiğiter Uluğ of Turkish daily newspaper Radikal published an article in February 2012 detailing how the club obligated three of its players (Cüneyt Erden, Bekir Yarangüme and Serhat Çetin) to participate in three special training sessions a day between June 15 and August 15, 2011. On February 29 of this year, Erden talked to SalsaBasket about the incident: The reason for this cruelty was, according to the club, due to the relatively bad performance of the trio during the preceding season. The real reason was the fact that the club owed money to these three and did not want to pay it, therefore trying to force them to find new clubs and bypass the previous unpaid wages.
Nevertheless, nothing stopped Beşiktaş from giving it a go this season with a new sponsor and star-studded squad including Deron Williams.
The club eventually retired Williams' number after 12 matches – and he even couldn't help the team from elimination in the Eurocup qualifying campaign against Dexia Mons Hainault. It's a shame that there was Canadian Solar Bologna competing with Beşiktaş for Kobe Bryant and a pity that the NBA lockout ended just after Lamar Odom had reported agreed to play for the Eagles. If not, maybe some more stars were to play in Akatlar Hall.
But who cares? The team already found a combination of famous names: Zoran Erceg, Adam Morrison, David Hawkins, Pops Mensah-Bonsu, Marcelus Kemp and Carlos Arroyo. Don't forget Semih Erden, who played for Beşiktaş during the lockout.
Considering EuroChallenge 2011-12, one can fairly say "come on, those players can and should easily clinch the title." Yes, Beşiktaş did it, but additionally beating Fenerbahçe Ülker, Galatasaray and Anadolu Efes in one season deserves praise. However, throughout the year, the team lacked consistency and the frequent injuries did not help. Losing Marcelus Kemp for nearly three months was the most prominent example, but Mensah-Bonsu, Çetin, Erden, Arroyo, Can Akın and Mehmet Yağmur all lost time to injury. More than once, Beşiktaş suited up a six-player rotation.
Losing against mid-level TBL teams such as Turk Telekom, Erdemir and even Hacettepe was surprising, and the team's inconsistency was even reflected within games. Recall the EuroChallenge quarterfinal playoff game against Artland Dragons in which Beşiktaş had a 44-25 lead at halftime but allowed their rivals to cut the deficit to 55-50 by the fourth quarter. The final result was 77-63. This is what we saw in the final against Elan Chalon as well: The Eagles having exactly the same lead, followed by a scare and the eventual victory.
Despite all the problems, Ergin Ataman did well in keeping the team united: Beşiktaş beat Anadolu Efes in the Turkish Cup final and will play Fenerbahçe in the first stage of the league league playoffs.
Finally, the verdict. I do not expect Beşiktaş to walk a very different path as that of their predecessors. We must congratulate them as the first men's senior club to win a European title after Efes Pilsen's Korać Cup victory in 1996. However, as very well remembered, '97 Korać Cup finalists Tofas later added David Rivers and not only won back-to-back Turkish championships in '99 and 2000, but also played competitively in Euroleague. Unfortunately, Tofas ceased operation suddenly not long after those glory days. (They later returned to the TBL with a smaller budget.)
On the contrary, Beşiktaş is a great club with a lot of supporters and tradition, and therefore I don't think they will disappear completely. I have to say that the number of BAT cases mentioned above shows a significant decrease in the last couple of years and triumphant coach Ataman admitted in a recent interview that, despite their undeniable presence, the money troubles are less severe and the team's overall financial structure is much healthier than in the past. Beşiktaş is a very big and popular club; they may not end up like BG Gottingen, CB Girona or Maroussi BC.
On the other hand, don't forget that the women's section made headlines last autumn with the players departing due to lack of payment, followed by the coach after a series of bad results. Recently-elected president Fikret Orman went to Switzerland after clinching the cup in Debrecen to discuss the future presence of the club in UEFA competitions because the team could possibly be unable to get a financial license in the near future.
Of course, that doesn't help when we want to look forward with hope and optimism … The future is still more black than white for the Eagles, and the euphoria created around EuroChallenge victory can pose a real threat for the future.
Uygar Karaca is a sportswriter and TV commentator from Istanbul who is enthusiastic about European basketball. Combining the game with history and analysis; nothing is more delicious for the former small forward who is interested in coaching. He has no favourite teams or players; he's just looking for stories. Karaca earned MA and BA degrees in Economics, explaining his tendency to see the socioeconomic aspects of the game. However, the reasons why he watches 20- and 30-year-old games again and again, looking for old newspapers that write about basketball, are still unknown even to him. The only things he knows for certain about the game is that the Americans invented it and the Yugoslavians perfected it.
May 5, 2012 ballineurope
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Phileus
This is a great write-up. As a fan in the US, I've wanted to know more about this club that kept making these splashy deals. I feel sorry for those players who suffer missed paychecks and keep playing for the fans only to see money thrown at short-term foreign players later.
More articles like these!
Aleksandar Zoran
disagreed. this teams deals aren't splashy, stop trolling phileus, you troll
and keep your stupid anti-turkish propaganda to yourself xD
Just to clarify here. Under FIBA rules, teams CANNOT sign any players if they owe money to other players or agents.
So Besiktas could not sign any players this year if they actually owed money to any other players or agents.
I think we should at least keep these blogs factual.
What if players have not been paid salary, but haven't filed for FIBA arbitration (or they did file, and their cases are still pending)? From what the article was saying, that seems like it could have been the situation.
LOL apollo talking about keepin it factual
hahahahahahahahahahaha
Teams cannot sign any players if they have players and agents file against them. Teams CANNOT sign players if that is the case.
This is a fact and every year you see it implemented. So no, Besiktas could not sign any players if they owed money to other players and agents. That is how the rule works.
Well that's interesting, because according to the FIBA BAT site that the author posted, Besiktas was found to have owed money to many players, and yet apparently was still signing players even while there were cases pending?
Actually, the rule would make more sense if teams could still sign players if they had pending claims filed against them, but not if they had refused to pay a final arbitration award by the period set by the arbitrators. Otherwise, just the threat of a (even frivolous) claim could become a huge bargaining chip in contract negotiations for a player. If a team couldn't sign anyone even while a case was just pending, then either the arbitrators would have to work instantly (impossible) or the teams just would be crippled until the arbitration decision was made.
If you say that's the rule, then I have no reason to disbelieve you, but I will point out that (1) that's a stupid rule as it's written, and (2) it seems like it's not so strictly enforced, unless the article is wrong 😛
You can't sign players if there is a complaint that you are not paying players and agents. Teams have 2 months and 29 days into the third month to be late, and then the team is suspended from signing any new free agents.
It's true that US media has reported dozens of times that no one ever gets paid in European basketball, but the fact is that US media is full of it.
Believe or not the players don't play for free.
Also, only about 50% of the complaints filed to FIBA by players and agents actually turn out to be true. And a lot of the times, the agents and players file fraudulent complaints.
What you seem to be confused about is, "not paying players", versus there being a dispute over what a player is owed.
"Not paying players" simply isn't allowed. The individual leagues have rules on that, and the players and agents themselves would have to agree to play for free, or to play under an agreement where they would get paid over an extended period of time.
Teams simply can't not pay players. If they do that, they get blocked from signing new players and if they don't pay them, then get BANNED from playing in European competitions.
If they still do not pay, then the next season they get banned from their national leagues for up to five years time.
So, this whole "players don't get paid by X club in Europe" is just a pure fantasy of US media and also some sensationalist European media, that is usually the papers of rival teams just trying to stir up things.
These arbitration cases, where you have players claiming they did not get paid, and their agents, are most of the time things like a player didn't perform well, didn't do what the team asked, and was cut or suspended.
Or a player got an injury and was cut, or whatever. The agent and the player files to get paid for this. And most of the time, they get ruled against, because contracts are not guaranteed.
Most of this is total BS. It would be like NFL players filing a grievance for not getting paid their full contract, after being cut.
Yes, there are some cases where players are not getting paid what they are owed. The ruling body tells the club they must pay them and they do, otherwise the club can kiss their league goodbye.
Teams can't simply refuse to pay players and agents. It's not allowed and anyone that thinks it is delusional. They have laws in Europe too, and the players and agents don't play for free.
But these articles always make it seem and imply that players don't get paid in Europe. It's amazing, because these same guys that make these claims that they didn't ever get paid in Europe, turn right around and sign another contract in Europe and are playing there for years.
It's amazing how they supposedly all play for free, and even get agents to represent them, even though they don't get paid, supposedly.
This whole thing about players not getting paid in Europe is so overblown and it's absurd.
If Besiktas was actually refusing to pay these players, they would have already been banned from the Turkish League. At some point, player's and agent's own word has to be put secondary to the actual legal matter and the actual rules.
This stuff can't be true, because clubs are not allowed to do that.
And if you don't believe it, then I give you just what happened to Panellinios. Panellinios had 5 months of debts to players and agents and was given a deadline to pay them. They did not meet the deadline and asked for an extension of one month.
Panellinios no longer exists. They were removed from both European competitions and the Greek League, and were made an amateur club. and the team bankrupted and did not exist anymore.
They also still had to pay off their debts. They paid their debts off, asked for another chance to come back, and were denied. They were told they could return a year later as a THIRD DIVISION team in Greece.
This happened just this year.
So sorry, but this stuff about all these players not getting paid is just not true. If it is true, then Besiktas would have ended up like Panellinios did.
Yes, thanks for the explanation, but to clear things up, the mainstream US sports media doesn't really give a damn about players getting paid abroad one way or another. I haven't seen any "negative reporting" about this at all, let alone anything blowing it out of proportion, which is why this article was so interesting to me.
uygar karaca
sorry but i have a little comment.
These information that i gave are all factual in fact.
You can find the BAT files and how the club treated players in the links provided along with the financial report of the club that declares the debt: you can find the actual statement by a simple google search.
If you click those links and still cannot see anything, then who is not factual?
Some comments writes that playing without wages is not possible. Well, those who says that, at least doesn't know everything about European or at least Turkish basketball.
There are very simple examples. Remember last year, Cibona. Players were refusing to be in training session because they were not paid for a long time. Even the electricity was off in their hall. You can find these news on Croation media if you really want to. Moreover, in Turkey; the case is much more severe. In the interview that i have gave a link, player Cuneyt ERDEN says with his own words that he is not PAID for months. Thereafter, he tells about how the club treated him. The thing is, most of the players doesn't go to FIBA to ask for help. May be they thing that it will give harm to their future career because all in all, they have to deal with those clubs and administrators again and again. Most of the Turkish players are not paid on time and they don't complain because networks and personal relationships rule. The BAT cases doesn't tell lies. They are there. Here is one example, one of the latest ones:
Summary of the case:
The American player Andre Jermaine Smith filed a claim against the Turkish club BC Karsiyaka Spor Kulübü Dernegi for outstanding salaries, bonuses and expenses. According to Article 16.2 of the BAT Rules, the Arbitrator issued an award without reasons.
"http://www.fiba.com/pages/eng/fc/expe/fat/p/openNodeIDs/16810/selNodeID/16810/fat-awards.html"
You can find the pdf file on that link on these.
Sorry guys, but yes, there are some clubs that does not pay their players "ON TIME"because of liquidity problems. When the award comes, they need to pay it they pay. That's where they were stopped to sign new players but coming to that stage is not easy. Maroussi is on the latest examples of this.
And also remember Jack;
In Turkey, there was a match-fixing scandal occured in football last July and because the scandal involves some many teams including one of the biggest: "Fenerbahce", no team get a punishment from Football Federation. There was an article (the famous article 58) saying that if a team even "ATTEMPTS" to fix a match, they should be relegated. Well, no problem, they changed the article. Therefore, i think you should learn more about Turkey while saying that if Besiktas didn't pay its players, they should be relegated or banned from Turkish league. There is no such thing for big teams.
Erhan
Good article all together, but there are some incorrect information as listed below:
1. Besiktas won both games against Turk Telekom this year.
2. Besiktas won the Turkish cup final agains Banvit not Anadolu Efes.
3. No extended time in the Eurocup 1/8 final game against Galatasaray. That was the last second shot at the end of the fourth period.
In my opinion, considering the rise of the rivals, Fenerbahce and Galatasaray, in basketball, Besiktas is definitely going to allocate more budget to stay competitive. No need to compare this giant club with the previous title holders.
Apollo do you really need that many nicks?
BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site » Blog Archive » List of European champions, 2011-12: First edition
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List of European champions, 2011-12: End of May update edition | Betting Comps
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7 years ago	18 Comments	FIBA, MoreAdam Morrison, Allen Iverson, Ana Dabovic, Anadolu Efes, Artland Dragons, Bekir Yarangüme, Beşiktaş Cola Turka, Beşiktaş JK, Besiktas Milangaz, Brian Dyke, Can Akin, Canadian Solar Bologna, Carlos Arroyo, Christian Dalmau, Cuneyt Erden, David Hawkins, David Rivers, Deron Williams, Dexia Mons Hainault, Dubravka Dacic, Efes Pilsen, Elan Chalon, Erdemir, Ergin Ataman, Fenerbahce Ülker, FIBA, FIBA EuroChallenge, FIBA EuroChallenge 2011-12, Fikret Orman, Fyodor Likholitov, Galatasaray, Hacettepe, Haluk Yıldırım, Iveta Salkauske, Kaya Peker, Kobe Bryant, Korac Cup, Lamar Odom, Marcelus Kemp, Marque Perry, Mehmet Yağmur, Pops Mensah-Bonsu, Predrag Drobnjak, Preston Schumpert, Rick Apodaca, Sandra Mandir, Sandro Nicevic, Semih Erden, Serhat Cetin, Sinan Guler, TBL, Tofaş, Türk Telekom, Turkish Cup, womens basketball, Yıldırım Demirören, Zoran Erceg
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