Not even before the last day of the Euroleague regular season can the coaches breathe easy in their position. Let them tell Jurica Golemac, dismissed from Dubai Basketball a few days before the team risks its few chances of accessing the play-in, a fight in which it is immersed alongside Barcelona. His replacement will be Aleksander Sekulic, Slovenia coach.
Golemac renewed until 2028 in October last year, but that contract is now history. It leaves Dubai Basketball eleventh with a record of 19-18 in the top continental competition and as leader of the ABA League with 15-1, tied with Partizan. Those merits don’t matter, the club has dismissed him and it is the tenth team in the Euroleague to change its coach this season, which represents half of the participants. A beastly figure.
Before the United Arab Emirates team they did Barcelona (Xavi Pascual for Joan Peñarroya), Red Star (Sasa Obradovic for Ioannis Sfairopoulos), Bayern (Svetislav Pesic for Gordon Herbert), Anadolu Efes (Pablo Laso for Igor Kokoskov), Virtus (Nenad Jakovljevic for Dusko Ivanovic) and Paris Basketball (Julius Thomas for Francesco Tabellini). Added to these are the resignations of historical figures such as Zeljko Obradovic, replaced by Joan Peñarroya at Partizan, and Ettore Messina, who was replaced by Giuseppe Poeta at Armani Milan, in addition to that of Vassilis Spanoulis, who left his place at AS Monaco to Manuchar Markoishvili.
Golemac’s is one more example of the impatience that reigns in Euroleague clubs, where heavy financial investments seem to force immediate results. Dubai Basket, debutant in the competition and having recently had to play in exile in Sarajevo due to the war in Iran, has done a more than worthy role, reaching the last day with options, although slim, of getting into the top 10. They would need to beat Valencia Basket and have Barcelona lose against Bayern at the Palau.
