Meanwhile In Hoops: Turkey Is Threatening To Quit EuroBasket, Claiming Furkan Korkmaz Got Jumped By 3 Georgia Players In The Tunnel After Getting Ejected
Just your run of the mill European basketball story here. Let's set the scene a little shall we. EuroBasket 2022 is going on. It's a phenomenal way to pass the day during the weekday. Games are on at like 9:30-3 eastern. There are NBA players playing, big names, all that. So today we have Georgia vs Turkey. A rivalry that no one knew existed apparently because shit was going on with Kormanz getting ejected, fans throwing stuff and a PROTEST.
Howevah it didn't stop there.
[Source] - Turkish federation vice-president and former player Omer Onan described the incident: “While Furkan Korkmaz was walking in the hallway to the locker rooms with our trainer, Georgia’s players who were not in the active roster attacked him together with the ejected player (ed.note: Duda Sanadze) and the police. There should not be an attack on the player that goes to the locker room. At the end of the match, 30 policemen each pushed us into a fight. We got into a fight with Georgia’s official police. I am calling out to FIBA and I have also told FIBA’s officials. Let no one deceive themselves or think that we are stupid. They will bring us all the camera footage from that corridor minute by minute without anything missing. If those cameras do not come to us, we will leave this tournament.
Oh right. Of course it was also police they were fighting. Now you have Turkey threatening to quit the event because of it all if they don't get the entire camera footage. I love the move. A little we'll show you, we hate losing so much we're going to protest it and then quit. Big time you can't dump me, I dump you move. Nobody better think Turkey is stupid either! His words, not ours. He's going to show you.
Absolutely hilarious, especially when it's not the only game that saw a protest:
PS: It's still weird when I turn on these games and have to remember guys have dual-citizenships. For instance Shane Larkin, ACC POY, Miami legend, also Turkish. Throws me off.