FIBA farce! U18 teams REFUSE to play and hold five-minute on-court protest due to ‘safety concerns over dangerously hot gym’ at tourney in Serbia

Both Poland and Turkey’s U18 basketball teams took the extraordinary step of, for all intents and purposes, stopping its game at the FIBA Euro championships in Serbia. 

Players from both nations suffered injuries in the final minutes Saturday and expected the game to be resultantly called off amid a ‘dangerous environment’ caused by ‘little to no air conditioning’ in the ‘already sweltering’ elementary school gym, per ESPN.

When the game wasn’t abandoned, players took matters into their own hands; removing competition from the remaining five minutes, according to the outlet. 

The ball was tossed the ball to each other and walked around the court in extraordinary vision shared to Twitter by St. Joseph Hoops.

This continued until shot clock violations or ‘intentional turnovers’ occurred on both ends of the floor. 

Multiple intentional turnovers and shot clock violations were committed in the final minutes

In the succeeding game, Swedish and French players slipped over on the same court in Serbia

FIBA has since issued a statement suggesting the elementary gym will be used in future games

What’s more, players from Sweden and France played on the same court succeeding the Poles and Turks. The latter won 78-63.

Vision uploaded to Twitter showed repeated footage of players slipping and falling in a variety of situations.  

FIBA released a statement to ESPN in the aftermath of the embarrassing protest, admitting fault.

‘The game between Poland and Turkey should have been stopped by the game officials because of the adverse conditions inside that gym,’ FIBA wrote in an emailed statement to the outlet. 

‘Our Competitions department will investigate this matter to understand why it was not done.’ 

A move away from further games at the Mika Antic gym seems unlikely given its other comments. 

‘An extreme thunderstorm [which] affected the area. It was so strong that water came in from the roof of the Cair venue, and the games had to be stopped for a period of time, for the floors to be wiped clean,’ via ESPN.  

‘All teams were consulted and agreed to proceed with the program of games. Local organizers proceeded to carefully clean all areas and all necessary measures were taken to avoid any issues going forward.’