Height is the most important thing to be a basketball player and India has a lot of tall players with good potential but what they miss is a strong domestic league that can develop their skills regularly, feels lubomir Kotleba, Sports Director of Federation of International Basketball Federation (FIBA).
Kotleba, alongwith Technical Commission chairmain Fred Horgan and his team met here in the Capital to discuss and deliberate on governance of referees and commissioners, internal regulations, licensing of referees and commissioners as of 2016, psychological testing of referees, new teaching methods and materials and code of ethics.
The FIBA delegation also discussed various things to develop the game in India, where there is a lot of potential.
“We know that Indian players have the potential to be successful. They are tall and if given good training, they will develop skills accordingly. I feel that the potential has not been developed enough,” Kotleba, told The Pioneer, on the sidelines of a promotional event.
“We have been working with the Basketball Federation of India (BFI) through the NBA India. We feel that India should have a strong domestic league where a lot of players with many teams can compete against each other regularly. Players need opportunity and stage to play in a proper way although we know that there are some issues in India like the country is too diversified and the economic resources are strongly divided.”
He said that hosting the annual FIBA technical commission meet is a good step forward for India where they can get a chance to host future tournaments like U-19 World Championships or Women Championships.
Kotleba revealed that the delegation will discuss and bring some changes regarding time-out, durations, penalty, ruling, how many seconds a team need to possess the ball in order to shoot. But, he added, the changes will not be big.
lately, two problems, schedule and doping, have troubled many sports and basketball is no different. Kotleba pointed out that they have a strong programme to take care of both the problems. “We have a strong programme for protection of players. We want to reduce the overload of the players because people want to see the big stars and not their substitutes in action. Under, FIBA, players go under serious testing to prevent dope,” he said.