Asconia, which will meet Maccabi Tel Aviv tonight (Thursday, 9:30 p.m.), has a particularly professional business model that helps it to bridge the high financial gaps that exist compared to a large part of the Euroleague teams and to keep itself successful and competitive almost every season.
The total budget of the Basque team is around 16 million euros.
For comparison, Maccabi Tel Aviv's budget is approximately 23 million euros. It should be noted that in the players' budget the gaps are less big, but there is still an advantage for the Yellows. For example, Baskonia's top earner is Marcus Howard who earns about 1.2 million euros, while in Maccabi Lorenzo Brown and -Wade Baldwin earn $1.5 million each.
So how does the club from Vitoria keep itself in the European top?
In the 1990s, the leaders of the team at the time realized that they did not have the financial resources to attract players like Barcelona and Real Madrid, so they decided to look for talents in other countries in order to discover young players and continue their training in Spain.
The most successful cases were Luis Scola who had a great NBA career and Andres Noccioni who made his way from Santa Fe in Argentina to great years in the Chicago Bulls and Sacramento Kings.
Center Thiago Splitter also came from Brazil, flourished in the Basque Country and has a wonderful career.
The team enjoyed the senior players and even reached the final of the Euroleague in 2005 where they lost to Maccabi Tel Aviv of Shaaras and Parker and some of them also cut coupons in the transition to the best league in the world.
Salazar, photo: Basconia, official website
The person responsible for the success of recruiting the greatest talents in South America is Alfredo Salazar.
The latter was one of the first in Europe to understand the magnitude of the talent in Argentina and Brazil and since then other clubs followed a similar path in building the team.
Following other teams' eyes on the South American market, Salazar also turned his eyes to Balkan and Baltic basketball with players such as Nemanja Bejlica or the current captain of Baskonia Tads Sedkarskis, who is considered one of the outstanding players in the Euroleague this season.
Every coach who comes to work at the club knows from the first moment that he too is committed to the process and the working method.
More than a decade ago, the club decided to invest in the administrative field as well and built an innovative sports complex in Vitoria so that young people from other countries could develop as players and as people.
The place has become too small and there is currently a project to build a new, bigger building.
Among other things, it was reported in Spain that this is a high investment of about 13 million euros in the project.
Baskonia coach, Duško Ivanovic, photo: EPA
In light of the great success in the promotion of the young players, there were also significant players who went through the Baskonia club and became leading players in Europe and the NBA.
These include: Shane Larkin, Mike James, Rodrigue Beauvois, Shabon Shields and a long list of players who shined in Fernando Boas Arena before signing with big teams.
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This success of many players helps Baskonia to attract talent at relatively low prices compared to other Euroleague teams that face it in the market, because the agents and players know that within a quality year or two they can make a financial and professional leap.
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