The documentation and statistics department of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) collects the paradox of resilience of Spanish players. The team led by Sergio Scariolo, world champion in 2019, is consolidated in second place (after the United States) in the world ranking, updated after the dispute of the Windows from the end of November. And, at the same time, the report by FIBA itself and the CIES Sports Observatory records that the ACB League is the basketball competition with the lowest number of selectable national players (29%). From the 2011-2016 period to the 2021 dossier data, the percentage of foreign players in the ACB has increased from 62% to 71%. More than 50 nationalities are represented in the Spanish league. A globality that also extends to the quarries of the teams. In the data from last year, the number of foreigners under 21 was double that of the Spanish.
“These are very worrying data,” Scariolo said during the qualification for the 2022 Eurobasket, which will be played between September 1 and 18, 2022 (with Germany, the Czech Republic, Georgia and Italy as venues). “These figures do not have to directly lead to a negative assessment of the national teams. But, facing the growth and generational change of the national team, it is a situation that worries us and that we must take into account. That Spain is the country in the world in whose League there are fewer national players makes the road very difficult”, the coach said, analyzing a list of summoned in which his players did not reach an average of 17 minutes per game in the ACB. The range of presence on the court accumulated by players like Fran Guerra or Yankuba Sima, key players in the last wins against North Macedonia and Georgia, in qualifying for the 2023 World Cup. Windows FIBA, without the presence of the NBA and Euroleague players, Scariolo measures the depth of the Spanish basketball bench, rescuing players with limited prominence and travel in their teams.
“The clubs are aware of the situation, but there is no global will to sit down and correct it in search of a better balance. The base of national players is solid but it is shrinking worryingly”, says Alfonso Reyes, president of the Players Association (ABP). “All this, unfortunately, will end up influencing the selection. And the national team is the engine of the fans and the sponsors of basketball, who are the ones who give the impetus for this to be attractive, ”says Reyes, who denounces that the ACB regulations do not favor a greater presence of nationals.
Teams like Baskonia and UCAM Murcia only have one selectable player in their squads: Álex Barrera and Tomás Bellas respectively. Others only go up to two nationals, like Bilbao (Álex Reyes and Álex Galán, now injured). Or three, like Fuenlabrada (Osas Ehigiator, Álex López and Chema González) and Betis (Pepe Pozas, Pablo Almazán and Mike Torres) in rotations of at least 12 professional players. Recently, Sergi García, Edgar Vicedo and Álex Urtasun have raised to four the selectable list of Gran Canaria, Obradoiro and Breogán, respectively. Four also have Barça (Abrines, Sergi Martínez, Oriola and Mirotic) and Real Madrid (Alocén, Abalde, Rudy and Llull).
More than half of the ACB League with a presence of national players of barely a third and, in several cases, squeezing the training quotas (foreigners trained for at least three years in the quarry) and forcing community passports to balance the accounts. “The nationals should be reference figures to mark the stability and identification in the teams, since the percentage of years of permanence of foreigners is very low. The ABP defends all players regardless of where they come from, but the low percentage of nationals is not good for anyone. The foreign players themselves are surprised”, adds Alfonso Reyes.
A loss of relevance of the Spaniards that is directly proportional to the statistics of the ACB League. Halfway through the championship, there are only four selectable players on the list of the 50 top scorers: Nikola Mirotic (4th, with an average of 15.1 points), Pau Ribas (30th, with 11.5), Jaime Fernández (42nd , with 10.8) and Darío Brizuela (44th, with 10.7). And only four also appear among the 50 who play the most: Guillem Vives (12th with 27 minutes on average), Xavi Rabaseda (29th, with 25), Xabi López-Arostegui (30th, with 25) and again Mirotic (48th, with 2. 3). Adding the points and the valuation —as parameters to quantify the specific weight of the selectable in their teams—, only in Unicaja and Joventut the contribution of the nationals exceeds 40%.
Baskonia and Unicaja, the extremes in the number of selectable
Baskonia only has one Spanish player in its ranks, the Catalan shooting guard Álex Barrera, who came to the team in September with a temporary contract to cover casualties and has only played 48 seconds so far in the League. Neven Spahija directs a ‘Babel squad’ that includes, in addition to Barrera, five Americans (one of them with a passport from the Ivory Coast and the other from Armenia), two Lithuanians, a Cameroonian, a Serb, an Estonian, a Latvian, an Italian and a Uruguayan. Among his training players, a Czech and a French to complete his world map. The team from Vitoria, which has signed more than 100 players in the last decade, has barely incorporated a dozen nationals in that time. For years, the only player eligible for Scariolo was Ilimane Diop (now at Gran Canaria), born in Senegal, who arrived in Vitoria at the age of 16 and spent 11 seasons at the club.
At the other extreme is Unicaja de Málaga, which has seven Spaniards (Carlos Suárez, Alberto Díaz, Jaime Fernández, Darío Brizuela, Francis Alonso, Rubén Guerrero and Jonathan Barreiro) in a squad of 12 players, to which is added the youth squad Pablo Sánchez, who debuted last year in the ACB at the age of 16. “We have always maintained the philosophy of being an identity team, betting on our great academy and national talents,” the president, Antonio Jesús López Nieto, explained this summer in an interview with EL PAÍS. “Our fans like quality foreign players, but they need to feel that bond with their team,” said López Nieto.
For a long time, the Spanish Federation has also been working on nationalizing one of Unicaja’s pearls, Yannick Nzosa, a 2.08m and 18-year-old Congolese center. The Council of Ministers must approve the naturalization by letter of nature, as happened with Serge Ibaka and later with Aymeric Laporte in the soccer team. FIBA, however, approved in 2021 a regulation that establishes that all those nationalized after the age of 16 must wait until they are 23 to play with their new country. So Nzosa would have to wait until 2026.
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