Jordi Bertomeu's awards night speech
|
Good evening,
It is becoming a pleasant habit to meet each other once a year, when we are finishing another Euroleague Basketball season.
We are honored to have you with us these days. These are competition days, but also days for meeting friends, for sharing what we like most: our passion, our devotion for basketball.
Madrid, as Athens, Prague, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Barcelona and Bologna have done in the past, offers us its hospitality in a very special year for European basketball: The year in which we are celebrating the 50 Years of European Club Basketball Competitions originally created by FIBA.
Madrid is an ideal setting, for its long tradition in the basketball elite and for being the city in which we have the team, Real Madrid, which has won this trophy more times than any other team.
I want to thank the Comunidad de Madrid for its hospitality and all of you for being here.
I especially want to thank all of our sponsors, NIKE, ISF, Sportingbet, GNTO, our broadcasters and the media for their collaboration.
I want to thank all of those who make this possible: the clubs, their players, coaches, our referees and our fans.
We only make progress thanks to them. European basketball continues to make progress despite the great competitors we are facing.
It is our responsibility, as managers of the competition, to visualize the future and prepare ourselves for the challenges that it brings us.
We are ready to debate with our owners, with the leagues and with the federations to make the right decisions so that European basketball has a response for the future.
As every year, I want to express my gratitude for the presence of an institution and some people that have a special meaning for us. I am referring to FIBA and its Secretary General, Mr. Patrick Baumann.
I also want to express my gratitude for the effort that Madrid has made in this and other previous basketball competitions.
I have already said that this season is a very special one.
We have gone around Europe, remembering the clubs and the protagonists of these 50 Years of European Basketball Competitions. We have expressed our gratitude to you. We have told you, and I reiterate it, that today we would not be here without you.
Without these legends, European basketball would not be a reference in the world. It would not be a sport followed by millions of Europeans; we would not feel the devotion that we enjoy at the present.
Only by recognizing the past we can explain the present and are we able to build a better future.
Yesterday we had the opportunity to remember these people that today are here with us.
We also have to recognize those personalities from the clubs, the leagues, and the federations who have had the responsibility for making decisions, the right decisions, difficult decisions at difficult times, and decisions that explain many of the things that we have seen on the playing court.
They have made European basketball great. We cannot remember all of them, but those who are joining us today represent all I have said.
Thanks to all this personalities, and to all of you.
I hope you enjoy the final.
MUCHAS GRACIAS
|
|
Euroleague.net
|