The 2022-23 NBA season is getting closer and closer, but it’s still not close enough for most hoops fans. And while they wait for the new basketball year to get underway, there is a very entertaining tournament currently taking place in Europe. EuroBasket boasts a surprising amount of big names, Giannis Antetokounmpo has dazzled, as has Luka Doncic. And with the eyes of the basketball community on the tournament, it took a surprisingly dark turn recently.
Interactions between basketball players on the court can get heated, trash-talk is an accepted part of the game. This has led to fights in the past, some truly terrible ones too, like the ‘Malice at the Palace.’ And the game between Turkey and Georgia saw the ugly aftermath of an on-court altercation, with 3 Georgian players attacking Turkey’s Furkan Korkmaz on his way to the locker room.
Korkmaz is a known quantity in the NBA, playing as a shooter off the bench for the Philadelphia 76ers. Naturally, news of this brawl came out in press conferences right after the game, but none of the involved parties had made any statements about it yet. Korkmaz spoke about the situation afterward though, recalling how it all happened.
Furkan Korkmaz Revealed How The Fight Went Down
As reported by Eurohoops, Korkmaz described in detail how he was attacked on his way to the locker room, naming Georgia’s Duda Sanadze as one of the assailants.
“First he started talking shit to me, I am not anybody to talk shit on my face. I am not going to let that happen,” he said, “As part of the game, he is going to say something and you are going to say something back. I reacted as a human being, as a man, I just showed a reaction.”
“There were no security measures whatsoever when I was going at locker’s room,” he recalled, “When we were going there, three players from them including Sanadze as well as two security guys, started to run at us. We started throwing punches at each other. Basically, it was a street fight. Five people attacked us, we defended ourselves.”
“It was such a scramble,” he added, “There were players from Georgia. The intention of the security guys was not good. They did not try to intervene in the events.”
This is not a good look for EuroBasket or FIBA, and they will likely hand out strong bans for all involved parties after the facts of the situation becomes clear. Another NBA player, Goga Bitadze, who was reported as one of the attackers, could be facing disciplinary action as well. Whatever happens, moving forward, this was a horrific situation that should not have been allowed to go this far.
