Coach Krapikas participated in Euroleague Institute’s Online Clinic in Barcelona 0

The Euroleague Institute’s Online Clinic in Barcelona over the weekend proved to be a microcosm of the competition’s growing worldwide appeal. Just as an expanding international fan base keeps catching onto the unique style of the Euroleague, so the chance to learn from two signature head coaches, Aito Garcia Reneses of Unicaja and Ettore Messina of Real Madrid, attracted a cross-section of world basketball students to Barcelona for four days. A total of 115 participants from 30 countries who had spent several months in on-line lessons with both coaches traveled from far and wide to learn from the masters in person during their course-ending seminar from Thursday to Sunday.

As impressive as their geographical diversity was the already-high career levels of many of the students, including another Euroleague head coach who days earlier had been re-hired to lead an energized Zalgiris Kaunas into next season’s Euroleague. With a new owner and an A License in the Euroleague, the former continental champion club from Lithuania is rejuvenated, just as Krapikas was in Barcelona seeking an edge so he and his team can hit that ground running when the season starts. "This gives me a chance to be a better coach," Krapikas said. "Even though I am the head coach of a strong Euroleague team like Zalgiris, this is only my second year as a head coach. I am very happy to be here as a part of the Euroleague Institute Clinic and have the chance to listen to Ettore Messina and Aito Garcia Reneses. They have something to say to all of us and we all can learn a lot from them."

While Krapikas next season may sit on the opposite bench from either or both of his tutors at the seminar, others came from afar based on positive word-of-mouth reviews of last year’s clinic with Messina. "What made me take the decision to come here was the many good things I heard about this clinic," Iranian national team assistant coach Safa Ali Kamalian said. "I had friends who had attended it last season and I decided it was a good idea to join this year. It is a very interesting clinic, with a lot of things to learn about. I will try to spread this knowledge around to Iranian coaches."

Many of the student coaches were long-time fans of Messina and Garcia Reneses wanting specifically to learn from them.

"I like Aito’s teams and the way they play, the results they have had, so it was interesting for me to come here and look for inside knowledge a little bit," said Dynamo Moscow head coach Sergei Bazarevich, a two-time World Championships silver medallist last decade as a player with Russia. "I had also worked with Messina at CSKA in his first year with the team, so I knew about him being a great basketball teacher. He is great when it comes to basketball clinics. There are so many high-level coaches here. Maybe they want to learn to beat Aito or Messina next season!"

Perhaps the most-accomplished student at the clinic was former Lebanese national team head coach Ghassan Sarkis, currently the boss at his country’s Champville Basketball Club. Sarkis won a pair of Asian Championships and 19 trophies in Lebanon. "I am a big European basketball fan, and especially of Ettore Messina," Sarkis said. "I have followed his coaching style since he was with Kinder Bologna. I have kept an eye on him throughout his entire career and was with him in a clinic in Paris a few years ago. I came to refresh my coaching memory. This is a great clinic with good coaches, two of the best in the world. It is very well organized, the atmosphere is very good and the level, how they explain things so much detail is really something very interesting to follow. I recommend this clinic to all young coaches."

The seminar was just the cherry on top of a month-long chance the students had to exchange views and learn from both coaches on-line. One of them didn’t wait to meet Messina and Garcia Reneses before putting what he learned into practice – literally. "I was fascinated by the on-line course and happy that I had the opportunity to use that. Even throughout the season I used some of the elements described there for my daily work," said Thorsten Leibenath, head coach Artland Dragons of Germany, which played in last season’s Eurocup. "The chance to get to know inside information from two of the best coaches in the world definitely motivates me. Anybody who is ambitious at coaching, at any level, should come here and profit from it."

What was true for coaches was also true for specialty students like Flavio Tranquillo of Sky Sports Italy, one of the top broadcasters in the sport. "I definitely can use some of the stuff I am learning in my everyday work as a broadcaster," Tranquillo said during the weekend. "Strategy is one of the reasons why so much people love basketball around the world. If you don’t know about what supposedly should take place at any moment, you would never have that on-the-fly speed needed in a broadcast, especially because you are also talking during the process." Appropriately enough, the man often called "the voice of Italian basketball" also had the words to sum up the clinic experience for him and his fellow students: "It doesn’t get any better than this."