In the talk organized by Pistoia Basket, Luca Banchi linked the evolution of the game to the urgencies of the movement, indicating the broadening of the base and work in schools as priorities, before chasing trends or “high” debates.
“The first and most important is to broaden the base of practitioners because, given the data, there has been a constant decline at both the male and female level. We must start from the base, i.e. the schools, because that is the main recruitment pool.”
“Before talking about NBA Europe, it is better to talk about the current state of health of basketball in Italy. There is a rather high percentage of abandonment of the activity, an inadequate number of participants, a female sector that is suffering.”
Inevitable transition on the national team and on the qualifiers, with Banchi critical of a system that limits the availability of players in the winter windows.
“The qualification criterion is anachronistic because of the next three qualifying windows two are played in winter when you cannot recruit players within the three main leagues in the world: NBA, NCAA, Euroleague”.
“We need to sit around a table and find a solution”.
Source: the Pistoia nation
