Promitheas Patras point guard Abdul Gaddy may be in his first season in the 7DAYS EuroCup, but he is a well-traveled veteran with previous experience playing in Greece, Israel, Latvia and Italy, where he spent two seasons with one of this season’s top contenders, Virtus Segafredo Bologna. Gaddy’s perspective makes him a great voice to share his insights on Promitheas’s season and the EuroCup in general. Enjoy!
Abdul Gaddy, Promitheas: 'We're not taking anyone lightly'
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7 Mins read
Let me start by saying that it is great to be in the EuroCup. Joining Promitheas Patras was an amazing opportunity. I think the club really wanted to have me and I just look forward to the opportunity to get better here. I know the EuroCup is a high level of basketball, so I think it's just a stepping stone in my career. The EuroCup is exactly what I thought it was going to be. I think I had high expectations because I have been watching it for years. I really like the European style of basketball, so I've been watching it and have a lot of respect for all the guys in all the countries and how they can play. It's really high-level basketball and I was trying to adjust and get better each and every day.
"We have really high character guys on this team who really wanted to win."
I like the new format, too, with more guaranteed games for everyone. I think it is huge, not only for the EuroCup, but for all the teams. They get that high-level competition against each other. You get to get better even if you start it off slow, you can get better and win some games. And it also helps other teams. They have to be consistent against really good teams that are expected to win. It will be good competition this year.
We won our first game in Round 4 after a 0-3 start. I think that's anybody's mindset in any league that you go to when you go down, games turn into must-win ones, but we try not to look at it as pressure. We just have really high character guys on this team who really wanted to win. And I know that we wanted to get that first one just to kind of get the ball rolling for us and be like, "all right, now we can carry that momentum." So beating Bursaspor was really big for us. We came off a 30-point road loss, too, and I think that was obviously on the whole club across the board. We had some meetings. We talked about it and kind of left that there and we're like, you know, we're going to get better from this and we got to learn from it. And that's what we did. So that's just a tribute to the guys, the club, really helping us get back on board so we can get back on the right track.
At some point, we were struggling but Haris Giannopoulos stepped up big and allowed us to get the lead in the fourth quarter. He is that type of player, one of the best shooters you'll ever see. He can really get hot really fast and he can really get it going. So we expect that from him. We weren't surprised and I'm just happy for him. He's a great guy. When someone catches fire that way, it is contagious. You just feed off that energy and then everybody's just backing them and we wanted to get him to keep getting him the ball after that.
Even with that, the game went to overtime and we had to regroup. The main thing was staying in the moment. Sometimes you can forget we were up, we were down, then we went up and then they came back and tied it. And once things happened, we had to just come back to the moment and win the game now. We did a good job of that coming together, thinking "hey, here we are, let's go get it". And we did. We had some guys make some big plays and we came out with the win. So I think that's just the biggest thing. We just wanted to win no matter what.
We now play against ratiopharm Ulm on the road. The one thing that we know is that in this group, everybody's good. We're not taking anyone lightly. Every team is good, no matter who we play. And so we really have to bring our A-game every game and this team is really good, really talented across the board. It's going to take everything from us to go out and go over there and get a win.
"We just got to keep showing up every day, putting the work in, keep building off of this win."
After the break, we will go to Bologna to play against Virtus. Not only are they one of the top teams in Europe, but I played there before, so there are some friends that I'll be able to see, that I'll be happy to see, because I had some great memories there. But also, it's just going to be a great game and it'll be a great opportunity for us to go in there and play hard, and hopefully still a win. That's our plan. I'm actually not surprised to see them doing so well because I remember having some conversations with some of the management there. They are really good people and they had high expectations of going back to a high level in Europe, to the EuroLeague. I think a lot of people know that and they have really done a good job of investing in some of their good players. They play well together and have a great coaching staff. So you could tell where they are trying to head and they have made moves to do that.
It's very nice to live in Patras, it's a very nice city. It's very chill for me because I'm a family man, I have my wife and my son with me, so it's very nice for us. We live right by the water so we can go to the beach a lot. The club is really great. They're very professional. All the people take care of you. They have high-quality facilities. It's been great here so far. I have no complaints, so I've been lucky to be able to be a part of this. Promitheas has a great basketball academy, too, with a lot of good facilities as far as like for not only our club, but the young club as well. They have all the amenities they need, the medical staff for them... they have everything! It's great to see that they have that and then there are young players that they have coming up through there. They look really good. They are young guys, but they are just getting better each and every day, using all the resources that they need to get better. I'm a big fan of that because I know I see some of that in the United States. That's big-time to see that here in Patras, Greece.
It's a long EuroCup season, we have a lot of new players and it takes time to gel. We have a new coach, too, so it's going to take time with him as well. I think the main thing is we just got to keep showing up every day, putting the work in, keep building off of this win, do all the stuff we need to do - watch film, practice really hard and just keep building winning habits. And I think if we keep doing that, that only brings success for us. So we just got to keep working on that and build on the momentum we just had from our first EuroCup win.