By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
The European basketball market has entered a new era, and few stories illustrate the changing balance of power better than Thomas Walkup’s departure from Olympiacos for Dubai BC.
In an interview with Spanish newspaper AS, David Carro, the agent of the Olympiacos guard and European director at Octagon, offered an inside account of the negotiations that eventually took Walkup from the reigning Euroleague champions to Dubai. He also addressed one of the biggest debates surrounding the current market: whether the arrival of wealthy new clubs such as Dubai BC and Hapoel Tel Aviv is responsible for driving salaries to unprecedented levels.
Carro strongly rejects that explanation: “It is a big lie,” Carro told AS. “It is the easy excuse that the top Euroleague teams have now: blaming Dubai and Hapoel for the inflation of the market. But it is completely false.”
According to Carro, Olympiacos, Panathinaikos and Anadolu Efes are among the clubs spending heavily in the current market, while traditional powerhouses are increasingly facing competition from new investors and ambitious projects. “Olympiacos and Panathinaikos spend far more money, and Efes spends more too… The thing is, these are teams with immense pride and history; they are used to players wanting to join them and to being the ones who poach players from mid-tier and smaller Euroleague clubs. They’ve always been the bullies, so to speak.
His argument is that the European basketball hierarchy has always been built around a financial pyramid. The difference now is that Dubai and Hapoel have entered the market with the financial capacity to compete directly with the established giants.
“It’s the age-old story: the big fish eats the small fish—it’s nothing unusual; that’s just how life works. How many players have Olympiacos or Fenerbahçe taken from Baskonia? And what about Barça and Madrid? It’s a hierarchical structure. Now, Dubai or Hapoel have the financial clout to compete at that level. And the clubs that have always controlled the pie—sharing the best players among themselves—don’t want that.
The most dramatic example of this changing landscape was Walkup.
The Texas-born guard, who represents Greece internationally, had spent five seasons at Olympiacos and had become one of the most popular and recognisable players in Piraeus. He had reached five consecutive Final Fours with the club and won the Euroleague, while also becoming an important part of the Greek national team. Yet, with one year remaining on his contract, Walkup decided that his time at Olympiacos was over.
According to Carro, the issue was not initially Dubai BC. It was the relationship between the player and Olympiacos. “Walkup’s problem had nothing to do with Dubai BC. It was a problem he had been carrying with Olympiacos,” Carro explained. “The club had not made any move for him to stay there long term.”
Carro says the player had sought improved conditions and a longer-term commitment, but no agreement was reached. “He decided that his time there had come to an end,” the agent said.
Three Euroleague clubs showed then interest in Walkup, but Dubai emerged as the project willing to offer the long-term security the player was looking for.
The situation became increasingly tense. Walkup exercised his legal right to terminate his contract unilaterally, knowing that compensation would potentially have to be determined through arbitration. A case was subsequently filed with the Basketball Arbitral Tribunal (BAT), the FIBA arbitration body, before eventually being withdrawn when an agreement was reached between the parties. For Carro, the negotiations were among the most difficult of his career. “There were many hours of work, a lot of tension. In major negotiations, sometimes you reach a breaking point. When both sides realise that it is not going to be solved that way, things calm down and it becomes clear that the best thing for everyone is to reach an agreement.”
The final settlement allowed Walkup to join Dubai BC while Olympiacos received financial compensation.
Carro says the agreement ultimately represented a positive outcome for all sides. “The player got what he wanted: a long-term project, for years, with a contract in the economic range that a starter on the Euroleague champion deserves.”
The agent also revealed that the final figures were lower than some reports suggested, with the compensation to Olympiacos closer to €1.55 million, while Walkup’s contract with Dubai was worth slightly below €6.5 million over three years, rather than the higher figures initially reported.
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