A little delay and not much to say today about the cigarette stories. Enjoy, however…
- Comment dit-on ‘Bobcats’ en Français?
- Staying with French basketball players and the NBA, check this out to learn how Fred Weis was mobbed out of New York by Jeff van Gundy.
- Ian Thomsen explains why European basketball is in financial trouble too.
- For Fran Vazquez, the NBA is only a second choice right now.
- Legabasket TV will be available for free and without registration from tomorrow on.
- Watch the best dunks of the French Semaine des As here; at least when it works. I stopped waiting after one minute of buffering.
I’m curious of how often players or agents do not receive money at all from foreign clubs. I find it very hard to believe that this is a common problem with Americans in the top leagues in Europe. I realize there are a few instances where this has happened and is proved by documentation, but I think many times stories like this are embellished. For example, a player that receives a payment a few days late or is put on a different payment schedule is the impulse for a story that claims the player wasn’t paid at all.
There were reports Brandon Jennings wasn’t being payed. However, he states in his blog that he has been paid in full and on-time all year.
Similarly, there were reports that Olympiakos has not payed Childress on time. However, Childress’s agent said this report is completely false.
From your knowledge, how often do clubs fail to pay the player and his/her agent. Are there certain countries/leagues in Europe where this happens the most frequently.?
Well, the thing is that Russia and Greece are most common places to be known in Europe where delay in salaries occur more often than anywhere else. Though now it might be the case in few other countries as well. For example ASK Riga that played in Eurocup this season has not really played their players for 3-4 months. A guy with potentially smallest salary on the team has not seen it for 3 months and has given ultimatum to the team – to pay the full debt and money for the rest of the season (the only reasonable way to deal with club like that) or on March 12 he leaves for other club (March 13 is last date for adding one more guy to the roster for any team). Anyway, Greece is very common place where you hear Tomorrow or Next week all the time. Russia relies too much on some big time Russian dude who will give money to the team, but does not happen on time.
Well, you cannot compare this season to those before, the financial crisis has hit basketball hard. Of course several clubs have money issues these days. Hell, even the NBA needs a 200.000.000$ safety package, and things are certainly much different there.
In general there will be a certain number of clubs each year that make negative headlines with that topic, but keep in mind that if you hear of a handful clubs that do not pay on time, it is only a very small percentage out of a pool of let’s say 300 clubs from Europe’s bigger domestic leagues, yet it grows a bad reputation on all of them.
Player: “A 3rd division club from Austria has yet to pay my salary.” Public outcry: “Oh those damn unprofessional euro league clubs, they don’t pay on time!”
Yeah I figured paying scandals were much more prevalent in the lower level countries and leagues that do not have the strong financial backing.