Will the Metropolitans 92 finish the Betclic Elite season?
The question, which might seem absurd, is nevertheless very serious.
According to our information, the Boulogne-Billancourt basketball club is indeed on the verge of seeing a new player leave a drifting ship.
The young French playmaker Matthieu Gauzin (22 years old) has indeed received an offer to join the Nancy club (Betclic Élite).
The latter, looking for a replacement after the long-term injury of Mérédis Houmounou, would have offered Gauzin a contract of several months.
Important data for the player who had no visibility for the rest of his career.
He therefore decided to take advantage of an exit clause in his contract which allows him to leave the Mets until… February 10.
After Josh Carlton, Amar Gegic, Jordan Theodore - who announced his departure during training at the end of January - and Alen Omic - who left at the start of the week -, Gauzin would therefore be the 4th player to escape from the hell of the Metropolitans , championship dunces with 19 losses in 22 days this season.
The concern is that if Gauzin leaves, the club will only have eight professional players under contract.
Having already signed 15 professional players this season, he will only be able to recruit one reinforcement.
The maximum authorized per financial year is 16 contracts.
However, the regulations of the Basketball League require that clubs present 10 players with professional contracts on the match sheets.
A condition which will be impossible to meet for the Metropolitans 92. “They have made many mistakes and let players leave during the season, they don't even know how to count to 10”, complains someone close to the file.
The club would also be subject to 4 fines of 30,000 euros
The Mets will therefore be obliged to forfeit the next matches, starting with a trip to leader Monaco on Sunday, before being sanctioned - unless otherwise waived - with a general forfeit by the French basketball authorities.
Their matches played during the year would be purely canceled.
As if they never happened...
If the club already seemed inexorably condemned to relegation at the end of the season - it is 5 wins behind the first non-relegation with 12 games to go - it could therefore ultimately not even be able to finish the season.
Worse, in the event of a withdrawal, he could disappear from the landscape of French professional basketball and leave again, at best at national level, at worst at departmental or regional level.
Furthermore, according to our information, the club would also be subject to 4 fines of 30,000 euros for having authorized departure clauses in players' contracts.
This hard blow is the last episode of a season spent in the doldrums where errors have followed one another since last spring when Pierre-Christophe Baguet, mayor of Boulogne, hesitated for a long time before allowing the club to start again.
Barely a year after reaching the final of the Betclic Élite championship at Roland-Garros - in a packed Philippe-Chatrier stadium -, and having been the center of French - and world - basketball thanks to the presence of Victor Wembanyama and Bilal Coulibaly, the Mets have never been so close to disappearing.