The Euroleague Basketball Institute takes its name from an ongoing effort to bring together for the purpose of education the best knowledge available on all aspects of the sport. For years, with the cooperation of sporting and educational entities across the world, Euroleague Basketball has been organising forums where professionals can meet and exchange ideas to move the sport forward to an even better future. Among those forums have been clinics for coaches, symposiums for media members in the press, television and marketing, as well as the second edition of the Masters in Sports Marketing and Communication that Euroleague Basketball is organizing with the University Ca' Foscari in Venice, Italy.
This season Euroleague Basketball has taken a major step to enhance those efforts by offering an online clinic with one of the most-respected basketball coaches in the world, Ettore Messina of CSKA Moscow. With this one-of-a-kind clinic, the Euroleague Basketball Institute is giving fans, journalists, referees and coaches from around the world a chance to gain first-hand knowledge of how the best coaches in Europe have developed their philosophy and created their own brand of dynamic basketball.
The online course includes lessons, videos, plays and drills made available over the Internet and supported by help from online course tutors. The course contents include five main phases: defence, transition, offense, zone and coaching. Students have been able to send questions and receive personalized responses from Coach Messina at the end of each phase. The course will finish with a four day on court clinic directed by Coach Messina and his assistants from Thursday, June 26 to Sunday, June 29 in Barcelona, Spain.
"We share Euroleague's desire to make the game of basketball more accessible and raise the level of play in Europe," said George Raveling, Nike Global Basketball Sports Marketing Director. "Combined with our five year partnership as the official ball supplier of the Euroleague and the recently created Nike International Junior Tournament, the Euroleague Basketball Institute is an exciting next step in achieving our mutual goals."
Jordi Bertomeu, CEO of Euroleague Basketball: "We are pleased that Nike have seen the intrinsic value of the Euroleague Basketball Institute, a project designed as part of Euroleague Basketball's ongoing strategy of developing the best professionals in the sporting world. The first ever edition of the Online Coaches Clinic with Ettore Messina has so far been a resounding success and we are looking forward to the diploma presentation at the end of June."
