Sorry for the off-topic response, but I was called out by turbostef.
turbostef wrote:.- Vasilakopoulos would never accept a Coach Giannakis?

Giannakis WAS Coach from 2004-2008
Vassilakopoulos fired Giannakis. He fired him after this:1997 - 4th place in Europe (with Greece losing to the great '90s Yugoslavia team).
1998 - 4th place in the World Championship (with Greece again losing to the great '90s Yugoslavia team).
Then Ioannidis was the coach for the 2003 EuroBasket: - 2003 - 5th place in Europe (Greece barely lost to Italy. The same Italy that won the silver medal at the Olympics the summer before.)
Then Giannakis came back and,2004 - 5th place in the Olympics (Greece barely lost to gold medal winners Argentina, having a chance to tie the game on their last possession).
2005 - 1st place in Europe.
2006 - 2nd place in the World Championship (including a victory over Team USA that had all its players except Kobe).
2007 - 4th place in Europe (Greece barely lost to silver medal winners Spain, on Spain's home court).
2008 - 5th place in the Olympics (Greece lost on the last possession of the game to bronze medal winners Argentina).
After this kind of success, that put Greece at the top 3-5 teams of the world, on a consistent basis, for 7-8 years, Vassilakopoulos fired Giannakis. And don't use the money excuse to explain that. Because the coach that Vassilakopoulos hired right after that, Jonas Kazlauskas, got the same amount of money that Giannakis was making.
It's well known in Greece that Vassilakopoulos fired Giannakis because Panathinaikos complained about him being the coach of the national team, and also of Olympiacos, as they claimed he could "defame Panathinaikos players through the national team".
So Vassilakopoulos fired him (nothing to do with money). Let's keep to facts here please. Thanks.
turbostef wrote:The insurance thing between FIBA and NBA is not that easy.
The NT's have to sign insurances for the players. That is right. The other thing is the extent of the insurance coverage.
In no way NT's are obliged to sign insurances that cover the full contract of the player over the complete duration of their contract.
As far as I know no NT have such extensive insurances.
As an exemple:
TEAM USA nearly has only max contract Players in their roster. If the average duration of their contract would be only 2 further years this would mean that
12 Players with 15 Mio. Dollars of yearly income and 2 further contract years would mean that the insurance sum is 360 Mio. Dollars!
The fee for such an insurance would be too much even for the budget of Team USA.
As far as I know the NT's are obliged to sign "normal" insurance that cover the "damage" of the player (med costs and so on).
I can not imagine that the full contract of the players is covered (the same discussion as last year).
That means for Giannis that the insurance sum that he get's in the case of injury would be significantly lower than
his contract.
As I said. Only Giannis has a risk. And he still wants to play
emunney wrote:It's not the full contract, but it's significant. The reported figure for the cost of Deng's policy to the Great Britain team during the lockout was something like 300k euros. My sense is that the league pays most of this cost when the players aren't locked out, as it's really the individual franchises who need the protection. I wasn't trying to suggest that Giannis would take out a 150m policy, either. I won't even pretend to know what the actual value would be; I'm not even sure it'd be on the same order of magnitude, but it would certainly offer him some security in the event of disability or potentially loss of value.
I don't agree that only Giannis is carrying risk, either, because let's say he doesn't sign the contract and suffers a serious injury. The Bucks aren't out the money they spent on that contract, but they're still out a potential superstar, who in reality was worth far more to them than what they'd have paid for the contract. Let's not get confused -- losing Giannis would be crushing whether we had already paid him or not. That's the real risk. Not the contract.
FIBA already made a rule about a couple of months ago that ALL players from ALL countries have to have their ENTIRE contract amount covered by insurance. Antetokounmpo's entire contract amount will be insured, no matter how much it is. Otherwise, he would not be allowed by FIBA to even play for Greece.
The insurance thing is an old issue that people like Mark Cuban made a big deal out of it. It's no longer an issue, as the current rules mean every single player must have his entire contract covered by insurance. And yes, that already is in effect for the current tournaments.