From money to misery - rp.pl

There, such situations seem beyond imagination. Our most successful basketball club, the 17-time Polish champion, ceases its activity overnight, just after the beginning of the season. Strict laws of the market or rather mundane games and lack of imagination of Wrocław businessmen, politicians and local government officials?

"All of Poland in the shadow of Silesia", with this slogan the fans from Wrocław greeted their team in its golden period, when in the 1998-2002 seasons it won five consecutive championship titles. And that was no exaggeration. Śląsk Eska, Zepter Śląsk, Zepter Idea Śląsk, Idea Śląsk - the names changed to the rhythm of the emergence of new main sponsors - ruled in the national basketball. In the 2000/01 season, as the first team in the history of the Ekstraklasa, they won all 36 matches of the regular season, and in the whole competition they lost only one of the five final matches against Anwil Włocławek. Basketball players from Wrocław won 17 gold medals in the Polish Championships (the first one was in 1965), 6 silver medals, 14 bronze medals, 13 Polish Cups and two Super Cups.

On the international arena, Śląsk has advanced to the quarter-finals of the Saporta Cup three times in recent years and was the first Polish team to qualify for the elite EuroLeague, where it played for three seasons.

Thanks to the team in Wrocław, basketball fans could watch the leading European teams in the country - Aris Thessaloniki - with Nikos Gallis and Roy Tarpley, Real Madrid with Dejan Bodiroga, Panathinaikos Athens with Dino Radja and Byron Scott or Kinder Bologna with Predrag Danilović and Antoine' m Rigaudeau.

"The club has undergone a natural evolution in the past decade", recalled Maciej Zieliński, one of the best Polish basketball players who played in Silesia from the early 1990s with a break to study and play at the American Providence University. "You know - at the beginning there was WKS Śląsk, a military club. After the change of system, the beginnings were difficult. After a year I left for the USA. When I came back, new sponsors came. Grzegorz Schetyna appeared in the club. Everything started to develop in the right direction.”

The appointment of Schetyna as president of the club, former chairman of the Independent Student Association, then secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Congress, member of the Union of Freedom and Platforma Obywatelska, meant new times for Wrocław's basketball.

In the mid-1990s, today's deputy prime minister was a co-owner of Radio Eska, which became the main sponsor of the club. It financed the contracts of foreign players and paid bonuses. With time, other, even richer sponsors appeared. New possibilities have opened up. A foreign coach was hired, Andrej Urlep, who led the Slovenian national team at the 1997 European Championships, and not so long ago - Poland. Adam Wójcik's contract was bought from Belgian Charleroi. It was also a novelty - the best Polish basketball player playing abroad was able to be persuaded to return to the country. Foreign trainers have become the rule at the club. In addition to Urlep, Muli Katzurin, former coach of the Israeli national team, and now our national team, also worked in Wrocław, Pier Luigi Bucchi from Italy, Jasmin Repesa from Croatia, and recently the famous Lithuanian player, minister and trainer Rimas Kurtinaitis.

The club could afford to employ such stars as Latvian Raimonds Miglinieks, Lithuanians Ginataras Einikis and Dainius Adomaitis, Russian Andrei Fietisow, Americans Michael Hawkins and Lynn Greer. Under Schetyna's rule, basketball ceased to be just a sport in the club - it became a business.

The budget has been growing steadily. In the four years since 1997, it has grown by 250 percent. Its building was facilitated by the team's successes and ... the composition of the club's supervisory board. In 2000, on the occasion of transforming the club from a limited liability company, in a sports joint-stock company, to its presidium, next to president Schetyna, an MP from the Union of Freedom, Piotr Żak, an MP from AWS and Jerzy Szmajdziński, chairman of the SLD parliamentary club, were appointed vice-presidents. A wider front of influence is hard to imagine.

"We have expanded the supervisory board so that Silesia is not associated with one political option. If we are to go beyond the domestic backyards, enter Europe, build a bigger budget year after year, then we cannot have a political color. When working for the club, political options are secondary," Grzegorz Schetyna told Rzeczpospolita at the time. And he cited with satisfaction the results of research showing that the most recognizable sports clubs in Poland are Legia Warszawa in football and Śląsk Wrocław in basketball. Today, the deputy prime minister of Schetyna and the voivode of Lower Silesia, Rafał Jurkowianiec, in the golden times the vice-president of the board of Silesia, are looking at the agony of their former club from the perspective of government positions.

In 2002, Śląsk won its last championship title. Two years later, in the final competition with Prokom Trefl, Sopot had to acknowledge the fact that a new basketball power was born. The team from Wrocław lost the decisive match on its own floor in Hala Ludowa. Since then, the team from the Tri-City has won five gold medals. The slogan "All of Poland in the shadow of Silesia" began to sound false.

Schetyna, absorbed in great politics, decided that it was time to withdraw from the basketball business and got rid of his shares in Śląsk. Before the 2006/07 season, the club was taken over by businessman Waldemar Siemiński, owner of the security company Ascopol, vice-president of the Lower Silesian Chamber of Commerce. "I wanted to give the team to someone who will guarantee that the club will continue to develop, someone who will make sure that the Silesian brand will not lose its value" - this was the recommendation from Schetyna.

How wrong. In less than three years, the club - an icon of Polish basketball, disappeared from the league register. For two seasons, Asco Śląsk by Waldemar Siemiński was third in the Ekstraklasa. It was led by coaches with names - Andrej Urlep, then Rimas Kurtinaitis, a famous basketball player, multiple medalist of the World Championships and Olympic Games, Minister of Sport of Lithuania and a member of the coaching staff of the Lithuanian national team. Initially, it seemed that the three-year plan of the new owner, which assumed a return to the top, had a chance of success. However, disturbing signs soon appeared: the team's withdrawal from the ULEB Cup, conflict with fans and journalists.

June 25th Siemiński unexpectedly announced that he no longer wanted to be the owner of a basketball company and proposed that the club be taken over by the municipality of Wrocław for PLN 1.5 million. He announced that otherwise he would not submit the team to the tournament. "Siemiński, do not destroy Silesia!", "Help Silesia, Dutkiewicz, help Silesia!" - the fans chanted during the street demonstration, but neither the mayor of the city, Rafał Dutkiewicz, nor the councilors of Wrocław were convinced. They called the postulate of the owner of the basketball section blackmail.

It was not completely detached from reality, since in the same summer the Wrocław City Council generously subsidized the first-league football team of Silesia. The already agreed merger with Groclin Grodzisk was abandoned, which would even settle the matter of transfers. "We will build great Silesia ourselves" - promised Mayor Dutkiewicz, and his spokesman Marcin Garcarz informed that by the end of the year the football club will receive PLN 7.5 million from the city authorities for the functioning and purchase of players, with a total budget of approx. PLN 13 million. For Sebastian Mila's four-year contract, PLN 1.5 million was paid - as much as Siemiński wanted for the entire basketball Silesia.

The talks between the authorities of Asco Śląska and the owner of the TV company ATM, Tomasz Kurzewski, regarding the takeover of the club, also failed. There was a threat that the club would not be registered for the competition, although the Polish Basketball League postponed the deadline several times especially for Silesia. There was even an idea to outsmart Siemiński and enter the basketball section of the former WKS Śląsk in order to maintain the first-league continuity for Wrocław.

Siemiński, however, did not let himself be blown away. In August, he surprised everyone once again by submitting the Basco Śląsk Wrocław team to the Ekstraklasa, and PLK accepted the application. Two days before the start of the games, the owner of the club decided that the team would play matches in Brzeg Dolny, 50 km from Wrocław, which further infuriated the fans. Previously, the club had not paid for the rental of the Orbita hall. At the end of September, his debt exceeded 350,000. zlotys, despite the fact that the city donated almost a million zlotys for this purpose.

The last unexpected decision was a court application to declare the company bankrupt and the team officially withdrawn from the Ekstraklasa. Only two weeks after the start of the competition. This move seems logical in Waldemar Siemiński's strategy. The owner of the club made a fool of local government officials from Wrocław, fans and the authorities of Polish basketball. "You didn't accept my proposals, I'll have my way."

"Asco - Basco - Fiasko" - a banner with this content was held by fans in Brzeg Dolny last Wednesday during the last game of Śląsk in the Ekstraklasa. Maciej Zieliński, a former excellent basketball player of this club and national team, and today a councilor of Wrocław on the mandate of Civic Platform, announces a quick rebuilding of the team, but we will have to wait at least one season for that. This one is already lost, and it is in Wrocław that the Polish national team is to play in the group stage of next year's European Championships. The city on the Oder was to be our basketball capital again. It won't be soon.