Instead of celebrating the seventh consecutive placement at the European Championship, Montenegrin basketball players suddenly fell into political turmoil.
Some media reported that the sports director of KSCG, Dragan Vukčević, forbade the "reds" to celebrate the victory over Austria, which earned them a visa for the championship in Slovenia and Israel, with two fingers raised.
The famous basketball player of Budućnosti, who succeeded Filip Patković in that position after the Eurobasket for men, conveyed this message to the players through team manager Nikolina Popović.
After the media captions, the 51-year-old from Podgorica made a statement, which we are transcribing in its entirety.
"As a basketball player of Budućnosti, a brand of Montenegrin sports since the end of the nineties, I always wanted to be an example on and off the court with my behavior. I gave everything at every moment to promote Montenegro in the right way. With the same desire, I took up the job of the director of the national team".
"To help us be the real representatives of Montenegro." It was never my desire to, in any way, limit basketball players in how they would express their emotions, especially after big and important victories. As I always did on the field, played with a lot of emotion, rejoiced and celebrated. I'm sorry that at the moment when we should be celebrating the huge feat of the girls, which I repeated to them several times after the match with Austria, they are misinterpreting and conveying some things".
"We are completely focused on sports, there is no need to deal with politics, speculations, create scandals where there are none, which diverts attention from the main topic, which is basketball players. I believe that we are all on the same task to continue to do wonderful things with our basketball and make sure that Montenegro is written and talked about through the incredible successes of basketball players", said Vukčević.
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