Dubai: Hosting the Fiba Under-17 World Championship is about “legacy not results”, according to UAE basketball coach Zoran Zupcevic.
Little is expected of the UAE, who face Italy, Spain and Puerto Rico in Group C from Friday, but Zupcevic hopes that exposure to world-class basketball will bode well for the UAE team in the future.
“There will be no major surprises regarding results,” said Zupcevic, whose side lost to Bahrain 90-52, Greece 108-33 and Lebanon 71-51, in a midweek warm-up tournament. “If we only look at the scoreboard, we won’t achieve anything.
“But if we are able to open the eyes of the local basketball community and show them the way in which we are going to move forward, then we will gain a lot from this tournament.”
Zupcevic admitted such an outlook would be difficult for his players to accept.
“They are a nice, hard-working group of men, I have no complaints about them,” he said. “But now they will come up against the big boys and suddenly they will start feeling the pain. Suddenly they will face reality.
“If we are able to channel that positively and benefit from that, despite now knowing how hard [it is if] we have to reach the next level, then we will achieve great things.
“It’s like the last race on Dubai World Cup night, we are the pony and we are up against the purebreds. We are aware of the difference but we are not going to run away from our responsibility.
“At the same time if we can spread a positive seed, and these kids can go back to their clubs and share their experiences and attract more players to play the sport, then we will have achieved our goal.
“It’s not about results, if we were only looking for results we would have never of agreed to organise the tournament. We can’t hide behind closed doors all our lives. It’s going to be painful, but sometimes you have to go through pain in order to make changes to improve.”
