Death of the Game

“THE SITUATION IS VERY bad, financially and from all other aspects.  We are just like an area who was just hit by a massive earthquake, and we are trying to deal with the consequences.” 

Those were the words of Said Shuqom, the head of the temporary committee assigned to manage the daily operations of Jordanian basketball in the wake of the sudden dissolution of the Basketball Federation more than a year ago.

He was speaking to 12 members of basketball's General Commission―a council of club representatives, referees, former players and others connected to the sport―which is in charge of electing and monitoring the federation (when there is one).

These 12 members had passed up watching the June 23 USA-Algeria football game to gather in Prince Hamzah Arena in Sports City, because after a year without an elected federation board, they were concerned enough to demand a specific date for holding the elections of the new federation, and an update on the status of the sport and the preparations of the national team for the World Championship. Shuqom was not saying what they wanted to hear. 

The brief conclusion? The situation was nothing short of disastrous: the federation was broke and facing lawsuits from numerous creditors—including the Ministry of Finance, which had frozen their assets. 

All basketball activities had been suspended for more than a year: there are no league competitions, no youth competitions and at least three local clubs with top-flight teams were considering dropping basketball altogether.

On top of it all, the national team needed more than JD1 million to prepare for the championship. 

“All basketball lovers should get together, because the game needs rebuilding from the ground up,” Shuqom said. After around three hours of discussions, the suggestion to call for a national convention to restore and revive the game was welcomed by all the attendees. 

And all this was happening even as the national team continued to train for the 2010 FIBA World Championship, in Turkey. They are the first Jordanian team ever to reach the top  level in international sport. 

How did Jordanian basketball's most glorious moment turn out to be, in reality, the point it hit bottom? 

A QUICK LOOK AT the Jordanian basketball scene over the past three years reveals a major obsession with the national team. The dissolved federation had invested massively in it, pumping million of dinars into 12 players and their coaching staff—while skimping on funding for the younger teams and the lower levels of the sport.

The strategy, according to former-federation President Tarek Zu'bi, was that a strong, successful national team would raise the profile of the whole sport. The “national team could serve as the lift that could raise the game into public attention,” he said.

The uncompromising dedication to this top-down strategy was born sometime in the summer of 2007, when the federation realized that the 2007 Asian Championship would double as the qualification tournament for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Jordanian basketball had been losing its fan base since the early 2000s, and the federation's argument was that an accomplishment like qualifying for the Olympics, to play against the game's global giants, would bring the sport back to the spotlight it enjoyed during the golden era of the 1980s and early '90s. That effect that would trickle down to local competitions, drawing fans to the bleachers and strong new players to the court.

“We decided to seize this opportunity,” said Nabil abu Ata, the federation's secretary general, during a chat in the summer of 2007. “The first step was with the hiring of a world class coach, instead of relying on a national coach who will sit in the stands and do nothing while the players shoot around.” The federation brought in Mario Palma, a Portuguese veteran who made his name on the international stage by leading Angola's national team to back-to-back Olympics in 2000 and 2004. Jordan lured Palma here with an unprecedented salary: JD21,000 a month, plus benefits, and an additional JD7,000 a month for his assistant coach Mario Gomes, according to documents released by Zu'bi after the dissolution of the federation.

Using foreign players was another expensive step. The federation recruited expatriate Jordanians like Sam Daghlas, Enver Soobzokov and Jamaal Maytah, and even decided to naturalize American player Rasheim Wright. Monthly salaries ranged from JD1,400-JD4,200 for each player, according to Riyadhi Club's secretary general Fadi Sabbah who had two players on the national team, except for Wright whose salary was JD7,000 per month. Correspondence between the federation and the Jordan Olympic Committee shows that by September 2009 Jordan was paying up to JD35,000 a month to the national team players alone.

At the 2007 Asian Championship, the stars seemed aligned for Jordanian basketball to make its leap into the spotlight, but a late-game collapse against Japan ended the dream with a fifth-place finish.

“If we would have qualified, basketball would have been in the spotlight in Jordan,” said the federation's Secretary General Nabil Abu Ata. “I hold complete responsibility for failing to qualify,” said Palma in a press conference―only to blame the players in a private interview minutes later, claiming that he had “put the players in a position to win the game against Japan,” and that he couldn't “get on the court to score myself.”

Still, impressed by what they saw over the summer, and believing that the national team was on the brink of world-class level, the federation extended Palma's contract and  announced that qualification to the 2010 World Championship was now the ultimate goal.

AS 2007 ROLLED ON, the federation's plan to raise the profile of basketball seemed to be getting some legs. In November 2007, Jordan won the Arab Cup, and it wasn't long before columnists in daily newspapers started praising the basketball federation for its vision and accomplishments. 

“Basketball has morphed from an amateur game to a professional game … featuring a very advanced system of regulations and an effective selection process for the national team players,” wrote Al Dustour columnist Batir Wardam. 

Never mind that that Arab Cup win came in a tough match against a mediocre Egyptian team, which was relying on one overweight and one aging player. And never mind that only two home-groomed players appeared in those games; the others being a mix of expatriates and naturalized foreigners. A couple of months later, Jordan lost to that same Egyptian team in the final of another Arab tournament. 

In 2008 and early 2009, it didn't take much to impress the casual observer: a few wins against  mid-levels teams, a friendly tournament title here and there (the Stankovic Cup, the William Jones Cup, Qatar International) a few final-game collapses that were good for second place finishes (the Arab Games, the West Asian tournament), and that was more than enough for the public to start looking at the national team as a world-class bunch. The second William Jones title won in July 2008 served as a clear indication of where the Jordanian team stands on the map of world-class level competition: tough wins over the Korean colleges teams and losses against Egypt and the Australian under-18 squad meant while the team has definitely showed improvement by clearly outplaying below-average teams it still struggled against upper-level teams. During that same period, from mid-2007 to mid-2009, the national team failed to record any wins against the top-flight Asian teams: Iran, Lebanon and China.

“I don't believe that results of the national team are an accurate measure of the development of Jordanian basketball,” said Samir Nassar, a former Jordanian player and one of the most respected names in Jordanian and Arab coaching, in an online Q&A with basketball fans on a forum at jordan4ever.com in December 2008.

Nassar is now working with basketball's temporary committee as a technical advisor for all national teams. He believes strongly that reaching a world-class level is an eight-year process, that starts with focusing on the under-16 and under-18 national teams.

“In my opinion, reaching a world-class level in basketball follows this process: highly qualified coaches, who are capable of creating a wide base of elite basketball players, who will be playing in the different age group's leagues from seven to nine months a year. Add the financial support, the professional referees and professional team managers, plus long term planning, and that's how we reach a world-class level,” he said in the same Q&A.

The federation's plan, by contrast, had practically frozen the youth national teams, as evidenced by the poor results they showed in their few appearances: finishing 10th in the 2008 Under-19 Asian Cup, 8th in the 2009 Under-16 Asian Cup and most recently failing to qualify to the 2010 Under-18 Asian Cup after finishing fifth out of six teams playing in the West Asian Cup.

If the team's records failed to raise red flags, what ought to have done so was the nearly JD1.08 million in debt the federation had accumulated by the end of 2008. Among the long list of creditors were both Zu'bi (owed JD25,158) and Abu Ata (owed JD41,616). 

“Sometimes, when the national team is in a training camp in China, for example, and they are out of money, we wire the money from our private accounts," Abu Ata said, when this reporter asked him about those sums in the General Commission's 2008 annual meeting. 

Out of its JD2.3 millions budget, the federation had spent JD1.05 million on the national team in 2008, but no one from the commission questioned this during the meeting. More importantly, the 2008 budget showed that the federation expenses was drastically exceeding its income leaving it with JD1.08 millions short. No members of the General Commission questioned the rapid accumulation of debt ( the federation has made JD470,000 in profit according to the Jordan Olympic Committee), a potential solution, or the areas of spending (which the Jordan Olympic Committee) would later claim were spent on issues that were not approved by it like players' and coaches' salaries). In fact, there were only two questions asked before the federation members were re-elected for a new term: one commission member asked for a quicker solution for the referees' pending salaries; another asked for the  letter "D" to be added before his name on the commission's names' list, because he was a PhD holder.

THE CRASH CAME A year later. In one of the great mysteries of Jordanian sport, the Jordanian Olympic Committee, which has supervisory authority over all national athletics, decided to dissolve the basketball federation in mid-July of 2009―less than a month before the qualifying tournament for the World Championship. 

On July 20, the Olympic Committee held a press conference, at which JOC Vice President Sari Hamdan, Secretary General Lana Jaghbeer and consultant Walid Abu Obeid presented a list of financial and administrative violations that had caused them to make the decision to dissolve the federation.

Alongside the excessive spending and the accumulation of debt, the JOC officials accused the federation of favouring the Zain club by granting it higher subsidies than other clubs, and by allowing the national team's coaching staff to work there free of charge. The federation also issued two of its executive board members monthly salaries (JD1,500 for Executive Director Ayman Samawi and JD500 for Abu Ata) without the written approval of the JOC—another violation. And Abu Obeid said he had documents proving that some of the federation's board members received kickbacks from coach Mario Palma's contract and other marketing federation-related activities.

On August 16, at the Asian Championships in Tianjin, China, Jordan's national team won an 80-66 victory over a Lebanese team that just added three new American players, who didn't mesh well with the original players. That victory gave Jordan the bronze medal, and a place in the 2010 World Championship in Turkey. 

Zu'bi, the former federation president, waited for the national team to return triumphant before replying to the Olympic Committee's accusations. He provided those who attended his press conference at the end of August with a stack of documents covering the majority of the league's financial activities, along with extensive correspondence between the federation and the JOC itself.

Zu'bi pointed out that the JOC was well-aware of the federation's spending over the past two years, as it has approved the budgets. One document, from June 2009, showed that the federation was already committed to reducing its debt, according to guidelines the JOC had set; it was already on the way to doing so before it was dissolved. (Never mind that the means for this was closing down its youth programs, its school tournaments and its mini-basket program, and scaling back all youth and women's activities). 

Zu'bi claimed that allowing the national team's coach to work for Zain free of charge was a "win-win situation," as nine players from the national team are also members of Zain's team. He explained the federation's club subsidy system, said the JOC had been aware of the federation board's salaries since 2003, and threatened to take unspecified action over the accusations of kickbacks.

What the press conference showed clearly was how closely the Federation and the Olympic committee had been working together during the previous years. According to the 2008 financial report, JD769,369 of the federation's JD1.2 income came directly from the JOC. And representatives from the JOC were present when the federation board was re-elected, just a few months before the dissolution, even if as observers. 

But for whatever reason, the partnership was over. In March 2010, the JOC replaced the federation with an un-elected temporary committee headed by Shuqom. It was supposed to stand for no more than 90 days, after which new leadership would be elected. At press time, it was still in place as the Jordanian Federations Law allows the JOC to keep extending the temporary's committee tenure. 

“THERE IS A LOT of blame to go around,” said former national team player and temporary committee member Tala Al Mojj, at the June 2010 meeting. 

Many parties are responsible for the crisis. It's hard to see how the JOC was not aware of the federation's excessive spending, and harder to understand why it would suddenly decide to dissolve the Federation just before a championship.

It's equally hard to understand why a successful businessman needs a JD500 a month salary for what's supposed to be voluntary work. Or what the benefit was to the national team of offering a JD21,000-a-month coach for free to a private sports team—especially when that sports team was fielding foreign players while the ones it shared with the national team sat on the bench watching. 

Hardest to guess, perhaps, is why no one from the federation, the General Commission or the Olympic Committee chose to question the situation earlier.

So what happens now? And what of the JD1.1 million Shuqom said was needed just to get the national team to the World Championship next month?

“The worst thing that we can do to these players is shoot them on their wedding night,” Shuqom said. “The committee believes that we should keep walking in this route, and after the players return from the World Cup we will tell them thanks a lot and we will let them go. We are trying to keep this boat floating, just to say that these guys got their chance. … After three years of spending the federation should have no problem with an additional JD20,000 to pay these players' salaries.”

“We can choose to go with a very tough decision and replace these players,” he added, “but the players behind them are much weaker. It is true that we are currently living beyond our means, like someone given a 10-cylinder car without having money to feed his family. But we have a strong team and we are convinced that they should be given a full opportunity to represent us well.”

Certainly, it can seems unfair to fire the only Jordanian team that has ever qualified for a World Championship. But looking at the hard numbers in terms of performance tells a different story.

Going over the five FIBA World Championship from 1990 until today, one finds that teams from Asia playing in the first round have a combined win-loss record of 8-36. Take out China, which is the only Asian team to ever qualify for the second round, and that brings the number of wins down to only three, and losses to 27. Over that period, the average number of points that teams from Asia lost by in the first round was 28.3.

In the upcoming championship, Jordan's first-round group includes the following teams: Argentina, which is ranked number one in FIBA's world rankings; Serbia (5th), Germany (7th), Australia (11th), and Angola (12th). Jordan is ranked 36th. The average age of Jordan's starting five players is 30. Six out of the 14 players in camp has had some sort of an injury over the past three months, including local stars Ayman Daiss and Zaid Alkhas, who are both coming off knee surgeries. 

These are the odds Jordan is up against. And they're the same odds it faced a few months ago when coach Palma made the stupefying claim that “if we had proper preparation, I would have guaranteed qualifying to the second round.” (Note the use of the subjunctive: he's not guaranteeing the second round now, just finding someone else to blame for not making it.)

It's lovely to nourish hope, but is burning another JD1 million to allow our team to lose every game by 25 points instead of 35 really a sane option?

The final indictment of the federation's top-down development plan is not the debts it racked up, or even the accusations of mismanagement. It's the fact that even by hiring expensive foreign coaches and players, and throwing more money than it had at them, the federation was unable to produce a national team that was truly competitive on the international level.

Will Jordan finally reach a point where someone says enough is enough, and focuses on reviving a game in ruins, hoping for the emergence of a real national team sometime down the line? 

This article appeared simultaneously in the August issue of NOX Arabic and JO magazine.

Special thanks to the colleagues at JO magazine for their help in editing the feature.