And the way we did it. 2-0 against a really good team. I don't think we were favorites against UNICS. Obviously, we had the home-court advantage in the quarterfinals against Gran Canaria. We were the favorite, but lost the first game at home against Buducnost. But we always believed in ourselves and played to our strengths. We really are just dogs and wanted to win.
We just have good players who can make plays. I think about obviously the Finals MVP, Rob Gray. He saved us a couple of times. Marcos Knight had some huge rebounds under stress as well. Last possession, big free throws. I don’t think people realize that J.J. O'Brien also in the last game saved us with the and-one. I think we always stayed poised and we always knew that if we stay in the game, if the game is close, we have a chance to win it. And that was our goal: to stay in each game and make a play in the end. Those are good teams and they can come back even if you are up like 5-6 with 2 minutes to go, they have players who can make plays. We just made more plays than them.
After we won, I ran to the locker room and got my phone. Some guys went live to be able to experience it from the inside, to show what is going on. It was a really emotional moment for some players. Being able to capture that moment live was great, especially as you have a few minutes where you can’t go and actually get the phone before they give you the medal. Damien Inglis thought about that and I just followed him and did the same thing. We were able to get back fast enough to get the medal and celebrate.
I was carrying the trophy for the most part onto the plane for the trip home. We flew at 3:45 in the morning and we took two flights. We flew from Kazan to Moscow and Moscow to Nice, which was great. We didn't have to go back to Paris. I had the trophy by my side the whole time. It was sitting by me in its own little seat with its seatbelt on and all that. It was a great feeling. Winning is an amazing feeling and the way we did it makes it even better.
Our fans were waiting for us when we came home to Monaco. We had a small parade outside the gym and we showed off the trophy and chatted with them for 15 or 20 minutes. We didn't do much else, for now. I think we may organize something later on, but we went right back to preparing for French league games. It's going to be tough to really celebrate, especially the way things are going with the pandemic and stuff. Things aren’t really open here, so it’s tough to organize something. Maybe we’ll just go meet with the prince sometime soon. Other than that, I would love to have more interaction with the fans, but I don’t know if we will even be able to do that. We'll see.
