Should international players be playing in the intense, high-volume of play tournaments like the European Basketball Championship — better known as the EuroBasket — so close to the start of the next NBA season? The Boston Celtics likely wish Danilo Gallinari hadn’t — but shouldn’t it still be his decision?
With the 2022-23 preseason slate of games less than a month away and players from Europe potentially playing in them until just before preseason kicks off, there is a case to be made that such participation could be disruptive to the rest and recovery needed as well on the basis of injury risk.
On the other side of the coin, these tourneys are important to such players, and global bans on them might even reduce the pool of players who would play in the NBA as an unintended result.
On top of that, players will play somewhere, even if they weren’t supposed to — is it not better for them to do so in a league-approved context?
The hosts of ESPN’s “NBA Today” recently debated this topic; take a look at the clip embedded above to see where they came down on international play and the NBA.
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