Marcin Gortat Unable to Play for Polish National Team

Blame it on the NBA lockout, as Poland can’t find an insurance policy to cover Marcin Gortat’s contract this summer. From SB Nation: “Marcin Gortat is looking forward to playing for his Polish national team in the upcoming European Basketball Championships that start at the end of August. But according to his agent, the NBA lockout has prevented him from getting needed insurance to cover his NBA contract. This issue was thought to be resolved when Gortat recently traveled to Cyprus with the national team for a preliminary game, but Marcin left the team once it was discovered that the insurance policy didn’t cover what his agent wanted it to cover. ‘It’s totally up to insurance companies covering what is maybe not a direct liability but obviously a logical liability considering that we are in the lockout situation which is what’s causing this entire problem to begin with,’ Gortat’s agent Guy Zucker explained. ‘A scenario would consist of the possibility of Marcin sustaining some sort of injury that’s not career threatening but serious enough to keep him out of action for an extensive period of time and the Suns having the option of terminating the remaining three years of his contract. It sounds simple but it’s not easy to insure something like that.’ Typically, an insurance policy would only need to cover the duration of an NBA player’s injury when they play for their home country but according to Zucker, the NBA has made it clear that they could terminate the remaining portion of a player’s contract if they are injured playing overseas.”