By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Back in 2011, during the NBA lockout period, a lot of players were coming short-term to Europe.
They were mostly Europeans like Rudy Fernandez, Serge Ibaka, Kevin Seraphin, Danilo Gallinari, Nicolas Batum but there were others as well. For example, Besiktas even before the lockout situation, succeeded in signing Allen Iverson while during the lockout, they brought in Deron Williams and were negotiating with none other than Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant.
Anadolu Efes took their shot at NBA stars as well back then. They had already signed Ersan Ilyasova and a bit later, they had an offer on the table coming from Kevin Garnett’s agent but couldn’t meet the financial demands:
“We registered Ersan İlyasova in 2011 during the NBA lockout. Then the season started, we started the matches, Ersan was playing, one day my phone rang. ‘I’m Garnett’s agent, we want to come to Europe during the lockout period, let me know what you think about it,’ he said. We answered, ‘Of course we’ll think about it. We can’t miss a player like Kevin Garnett’. They asked for an incredibly high amount of money. One million dollars for two months. To be exact, 500,000 for a month. Back then, I was the team manager and I couldn’t get a decision by myself. We talked about it and we couldn’t afford the money. So, I called his agent and said: ‘No, we are not signing Kevin Garnett (laughs)”, Efes general manager Alper Yilmaz mentioned during NTV’s NBA studio program (Turkish television).