Another episode was added to a long string of weird things going in the Turkish Basketball League, involving Ergin Ataman.
A traditional Istanbul derby between Fenerbahce and Besiktas couldn’t go unnoticed and without drama. Although the home team got the narrow win, 86-82, the guest team has a lot of complaints.
More specifically everything started when Kaya Peker used his elbows on David Hawkins. The American reacted, the two players pushed each other around, but the refs (actually it was the ref Engin Kennerman) completely blew the incident out of proportions by ejecting both players.
The decision didn’t go down well with Besiktas’ coach Ergin Ataman who objected the decision, which in turn triggered a series of chants against the coach by the home team fans, taunting him with chants regarding an old case of doping.
Ataman then complained about the chants, asking the refs to record the event in the game official report and give an official verbal warning via a public announcement in the arena, as the rule stipulates. But in vain, as the refs would have none of it. However that wasn’t capable of preventing the coach asking for it, again and again. In the end he asked the Kennerman to eject him too and his request was granted.
Here comes the best part. Moments after withdrawing to the locker rooms Ataman channeled his outrage to social media with a tweet that read: “Shame on the ones who brought Turkish basketball into this situation and the ones who are afraid of them”.
The story doesn’t come to and end there though. Evoking a void in rules, Besiktas has asked for the game to be played again, taking advantage of the legal precedent set by TBL decision to have Aliaga-Anadolu Efes (Efes had won) game being repeated due to a ref’s mistakes.
This ruling triggered a chain of similar request by a number of clubs, including Anadolu Efes who asked for their game vs Banvit last game (Banvit had won) to be repeated for trivial decisions by the refs, such as the ball going out of bounds by another team player’s hands.
Similarly Besiktas is asking for a game repeat claiming Ukic released the ball for a successful three point attempt after the refs had called an offensive foul on Oguz Savas. As anyone would suspect this could lead into a vicious cycle of objections and game being played again and again, based solely on one wrong call by the refs during the entire game.
In the meantime Ataman is continuing his one-man-fight against verbal abuse by claiming he will not coach his team again in Fenerbahce’s arena if their fans don’t stop insulting him, which goes against the Sports Violence Prevention Act, an official law of the Turkish Republic.
Such incidents, combined with previous episodes, the millions wasted on questionable signings, the current state of Turkish teams (Efes announced Elias Zouros as their new coach, Spahija is counting his last weeks), the failing bid of Turkish teams to reach Euroleague Final Four shows an evident lack of stability and long term planning in the entire establishment called “Turkish Basketball”.
For their own sake and the sake of their fans, both inside and outside Turkey, TalkBasket hopes the administration of clubs and Federation rethink their methods and introduce reforms which will stop Turkish basketball being the laughing stock of Europe.
