DJ Kennedy and Prometey Slobozhanske enter the team's debut campaign in the 7DAYS EuroCup with unfinished business after the Ukraine-Russia war cost them a chance to play for a title last season. Kennedy and the Ukrainian club were poised to challenge for the 2021-22 crown in the Basketball Champions League before the fighting in eastern Europe ended their dreams.
“We feel like we have unfinished business for everything that happened with us from last year,” Kennedy said. “We feel like we never got a fair chance to really just finish strong. We thought we had a special group. We thought we had a good chance of winning the Champions League last year.”
Prometey fought back from a Game 1 loss to eliminate Israeli power Hapoel Jerusalem in a best-of-three play-in series to reach the Round of 16 group stage. The team then won their first two games before the February 2022 national team window and were on the doorstep of the quarterfinals.
During that break, on February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine and everything was thrown into the wind. Prometey ended up playing its third game in the group against U-BT Cluj Napoca on March 3 with the contest relocated to Nymburk, Czech Republic because of safety concerns in Ukraine. Prometey lost 92-81. The 32-year-old Kennedy said looking back that the Cluj game should not have been played as it was so hard for the team to think about the game.