The president of basketball's flagging VTB United League has appealed to Russia's top clubs to ditch their national league and allow his Eastern European competition to determine the Russian national champions.
Sergei Ivanov, the president of the VTB league, wrote Monday to all the clubs that compete in Russia's top-tier Professional Basketball League, urging them to sign up from next season.
The plan would enact a significant restructuring of the game in Eastern Europe, akin to that of the Kontinental Hockey League, which pulled its teams out of their national leagues to play their regular seasons solely there.
Russia's sports minister Vitaly Mutko on Tuesday said that formally it was down to the Russian Basketball Federation to rule which competition has the right to determine the national champions, even though it is up to the clubs themselves where to play.
"If the RBF considers it necessary to unite these two leagues, this is within their competency," Mutko told RIA Novosti. "I think that merging the leagues would be a good move, but the main priority must remain Russian basketball."
The VTB United League was founded in 2008 but has lost most of its top teams since the continent's premier competition, the Euroleague, banned its clubs from participating in leagues that do not offer Euroleague qualification for the winners.
Ivanov's vision has teams from all over Eastern Europe competing in the league, offering passage to the Euroleague and with the best-performing club from each country being declared its national champion.
CSKA Moscow, a chief stakeholder as 18-time Russian national champion, has tentatively supported the plan.
"If the VTB league receives official status and gets a license as the Russian championship, then we will obviously take part in this competition, as well as Euroleague," Andrei Vatunin, CSKA's president, told RIA Novosti.
