Luol Deng won’t play the Eurobasket

The British Basketball federation had high hopes on bringing the Chicago Bull to London in order to qualify for the next Eurobasket 2009 in Poland. Now this plan has turned out bad.

As the British Daily Mail reports tonight in its online edition, Luol Deng is out of Great Britain’s squad as the NBA’s insurance company did not want to cover his contract with the Bulls. According to the article, Luol Deng who is currently with the National Team in a preparation camp in Sardinia, is devastated about this decision.

The British basketball experts at 24/7 give more details about the problems that occurred.

Deng missed three games in November with a minor back problem and the insurance broker’s decision is based on an MRI scan taken then. Although a policy has been issued it does not cover that part of the player’s body.

But that’s not all. As Deng just signed a new contract a few days ago, there is an additional problem for the insurance company.

Although Deng is not the best-paid international NBA player, in terms of annual salary in 2008-09, he does currently have the largest value left remaining on an existing contract and, therefore, represents the biggest risk for an insurance company

For the federation, this was of course a worst case scenario in their aim to set up a competitive squad to represent Great Britain in the upcoming qualifying round of Eurobasket 2009 in Poland.

But if this was not enough, Basketball 24/7 reveals also that both Ben Gordon and Robert Archibald are out of the team. Gordon declined to make his debut before his contract situation with the Bulls has been clarified while Archibald has a knee injury that sidelined him.