Everything has changed in the last …

Everything has changed in the last month because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Euroleague officially canceled the season on May 25. How was the process of dealing with the league? Bostjan Nachbar: It was actually a very long process. We started with the players in Milano feeling very insecure about what’s going on, because that’s where the first outbreak was. So we started feeling a big need to suspend the season during the second week of March. There was a lot of talk with players, a lot of misinformation and a lot of unsureness on what to do, but we decided to notify early that the players were wishing to suspend the league because they didn’t feel safe anymore to travel and play. After the competition was suspended it started two months of long process communicating with the Euroleague and really making them aware of the players’ stance throughout this process. The first thing we wanted to secure were the minimum salaries that players must receive because there were no “force majeure” rules in players’ contracts. So we were able to achieve the minimum standard for players today which is 80 percent of their annual salary. Then the next step was talking with the players about whether they would like to continue or not, whether they felt safe enough to continue with the competition.