Joan Laporta presented his team for the basketball section of the club: Roger Grimau would be the technical secretary, Roger Esteller would be the director, and Audie Norris, currently under contract with Sevilla, would play a relevant role in the academy.

The former president said that “we want to recover the team’s identity and make the fans fill the Palau again. I think that a new Palau is fundamental for getting better attendance numbers, but I still have to talk to the new mayor about the whole Espai Barça project.”

Laporta also announced that he would retire the shirt Audie Norries wore in the ‘80s and ‘90s for Barça.

Roger Grimau stated that “we have to become a team again and get as many homegrown players in the squad as possible. When we won the Euroleague in 2010 we had five Catalan players and a Spanish one. That’s the idea we have so that people get close to the team again.”

Grimau also explained that he counts on Xavi Pascual as a coach and on Juan Carlos Navarro as a reference point for the team: “I think Pascual is one of the greatest coaches in Europe and he knows the house very well. I count on Navarro. He is the best player in Barça’s basketball history. He’s great and honest, I know players who don’t have his talent and train half of the time he does.”

“I’ve been at Barça for many years, I was a captain, I know what this is about, I know what I want and I know what people expect from the basketball section. I will work with Roger [Esteller] as hard as we need to bring the team back to the best level,” he added.

Grimau’s plans also include preventing players like Mario Hezonja, a massive talent who was raised in the academy and was drafted by Orlando magic, from leaving for the NBA: “It’s one of the dangers we work with, but my intention is to try to keep them here for as long as possible, to let them play and win everything here and then they can leave for the NBA.”

Esteller explained that their intention was to get back to the team spirit that the team who won the Euroleague in 2010 had: “We had a team with identity, five Catalans and a Spaniard in a squad of 12 players. We have to fill up the Palau, to look for the connection between the team and the fans and we will work to create a structure that allows us to bring useful players into the academy and develop them for the first team.”

Laporta recalled that during his first presidency, Josep Maria Bartomeu had been in charge of the basketball section. About this, he said: “I didn’t like how he handled various things during that time. When he left with Rosell they were predicting doom and what happened was that Barça couldn’t stop winning.”

Other former Barça basketball players besides Grimau, Esteller and Norris were present at this presentation: Jordi Trias, Xavi Crespo, Lubos Barton and Julián Ortiz.