Once Upon a Time from America

Viktor Khryapa again got into the “basket” of CSKA

Once upon a time from America. For the first time in the history of relations between the Russian Superleague and the American National Basketball Association (NBA), a Russian player returned home in the middle of the season - to the team from which he left at the time. Viktor Khryapa, European champion and ex-forward of the Chicago Bulls, again plays for CSKA

The return was not easy. Back in November, when a soldier Aleksey Savrasenko received an injury threatening a long treatment, the CSKA leadership approached Viktor and his then club with a specific proposal. And received a polite, but very harsh refusal.

“Viktor, one of the undoubted heroes of the summer European championship, had almost no game practice in Chicago - he ended up, as they say, not in his team,” Andrey Vatutin, general director of PBC CSKA, declassifies the details of long negotiations. - He was told in the fall that you most likely would not play, but in the winter we will exchange you for another team - train, get paid and wait for the trade. And if so, then we could only wait: after all, money as such practically does not participate in transitions within the NBA and from it to Europe.

"Golden Antelope"

By the way, CSKA has no particular problems with money: last year, the army team was the first of all Russian (not just basketball, but in general all gaming) professional clubs to open their budget to the public, showing that they operate on the market with a 30 million dollar amount . In the country, this gesture caused surprised dissatisfaction (now others will have to "open up" sooner or later!), In Europe - serious respect, everything has long been going to the light there, only the Greek "Panathinaikos", according to official data, is a little interrupted these serious figures. Basketball is a very logical game in itself, in the final of the Euroleague Panathinaikos met CSKA, and it is possible that the extra couple of millions cost the Greeks exactly two points of advantage, although in fact the decisive advantage was the venue of the match - Athens. So, Ramunas Siskauskas was recognized as the best player in the finals, whom CSKA successfully bought from the main European competitor in the off-season - in the Old World, transitional things are done that way.

In the New, everything is different. Remember the developing cartoon "Golden Antelope", where the boy-worker threw the greedy idle oligarch Raja in the face of the contemptible servants: "If I don't need one coin, then why do I need everything?" Here is the NBA - an office that cannot be offered more, since there is no starting point itself.

“Chicago really wanted to see Pou Gasol from Memphis, they were ready to give up several players for the star Spaniard, including Khryapa,” says Vatutin. - And if this deal took place, Victor would hardly be in our team now. But Chicagoans weren't the only ones with eyes on Gasol, and as a result, the Los Angeles Lakers offered Memphis better compensation terms. And in other exchange options, to our great joy, Khryapa was not in demand. And then it was already possible to start talking about the early termination of the contract. But again, this is not Europe, where you only need to agree on the amount of the transfer and personal salary. If you are dealing with the NBA, then you need to be prepared for the most unexpected expenses, for example, compensation payments to the union and pension funds of players for the period that Victor underplayed in America.

Growth in price

So - you either pay nothing, or - for everything. Along the way, looking around at competitors, near and far: they wanted to see Khryapa host both European clubs, starting, just in case, with Barcelona, ​​and Russian ones, one of which offered the player even more than CSKA (these are the ones that are spinning in our basketball today money!)

Viktor Khryapa, by the way, is necessary for CSKA not so much even for the Euroleague, but for our internal championship. The fact is that there is a strict limit on legionnaires in it: there cannot be more than three of them on the site at the same time. And since in the case of Savrasenko, the worst fears were confirmed - for Alexei the season is over, it was the Russian "big" player who was needed to maintain the main game scheme. Of course, the club has them, but not yet at the level of European champions.

- We respect our championship too much. Oddly enough, it is much easier to achieve success in the Euroleague than in Russia: buy yourself a dozen cool foreigners, weakening your competitors along the way, as in the case of Siskauskas, and smash them all in Europe! Vatutin states. - But since we have come to such rules, we need to think about how to win at home, playing according to them. The only bad thing is that because of this, the domestic market turns out to be overheated: with the introduction of limits, our players, without adding to their skills, have sharply increased in price and, accordingly, their individual requests have skyrocketed. So sometimes it’s easier to enter into a complex negotiation process with America ...