International Basketball Federation (FIBA) President Hamane Niang has insisted that contrary to the Basketball Champions League, the 2019-20 FIBA Europe Cup season will not resume.
Following strong recommendations by the working group that was set up to explore different options and supported by the FIBA Europe Competitions` Commission, the Board voted to cancel the current season of the three FIBA Europe club competitions which were initially suspended back in March.
In an exclusive interview with RFI, Niang reiterated:
“I would like to recall that for 2020 FIBA had scheduled the Olympic Qualification Tournaments (OQT) for the Tokyo Games, which are very important for basketball fans. With the Covid-19, we have had to postpone these TQO 2020 to 2021.
“As for 2021, this is a flagship year for our zonal competitions with the Afrobasket, the Eurobasket, the AsiaCup and the AmeriCup. So you can see that we are affected for these two years, like other international federations.
“However, FIBA revised its competition calendars in April 2020. We decided to hold the Afrobasket, AsiaCup and TQO for 2021 in Tokyo. On the other hand, the Eurobasket and the AmeriCup were postponed to 2022. We hope that these alterations will allow us to get through this crisis better.
The season 2019-20 in FIBA Europe Cup, EuroLeague Women and EuroCup Women will not resume and there will be no champions. All clubs that were in the Quarter-Finals stage at the time the competition was suspended, will receive ranking points for reaching the Quarter-Finals as per Regulations
FIBA announced that its Under-17 Basketball World Cups cannot take place this year and that it was examining options to play the tournaments in 2021.
Meanwhile, a FIBA Under-17 Skills Challenge is scheduled to take place in August, with the purpose of encouraging national federations to bring their teams together for a training camp.
New dates have been confirmed for two FIBA tournaments in 2021, with the Under-19 Basketball World Cup now scheduled for July 3 to 11 and the Under-19 Women’s Basketball World Cup now scheduled for August 7 to 15.
An activation plan has also been approved to work towards a resumption of 3×3 basketball, involving FIBA working with various authorities of host cities and countries on when and how the sport’s half-court version can restart.
The Executive Committee also received updates on the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup 2022 and FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023, as well as from the three working groups centred on the organisation’s strategic priorities for the 2019-2023 cycle – Empower National Federations, Women in Basketball and Enlarge FIBA Family.
