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Championship Game post-game press conference quotes

Championship Game post-game press conference quotes

News

21 May 20224 Mins read

Championship Game post-game press conference quotes

Final Four

Final

game Anadolu Efes Istanbul vs Real Madrid

CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

21 May 2022, 17:00

Final Four

21 May 2022, 17:00

Final Four

Real Madrid

RMB

Anadolu Efes Istanbul

EFS

Final Score

Ergin Ataman, Anadolu Efes Istanbul head coach

“I’m sorry for Real Madrid, they made a great game, but we knew how to manage the game, especially the last minutes because I have in the team star players who know how to play in that kind of situation. In the finals, strategy, especially offensive strategy, is not working well, you see that in all games in the Final Four. But great players can resolve situations. In the last quarter, all the team made a great defense, we really solved the problems for the offensive rebounds. We had a big problem until the third quarter with offensive rebounds, we gave away a lot of points, and then we found a way to win the game.

"Of course, we are deeply upset about the situation [in Ukraine]. I spoke about this on the first day that the war started. I was maybe the first and I think somebody cut my words on live TV. It’s unacceptable that it’s happening this century in Ukraine. I live in Turkey with Turkish people and we were all upset when we saw the honest people, children, old people, they died, alone, they disappeared. It’s unbelievable that this happened this century in Ukraine, in 2022. I’m very sorry also about my friends in the clubs in Russia who have nothing, only because of politics, bullshit politics. I hope that finally, humanity will beat this situation like we beat the Coronavirus. I’m optimistic that we can beat also this.

"Perfect game, perfect season [for Tibor Pleiss]. He gave us also this Final Four, as you know he played great in the last game against Milan in Istanbul. We believe in him and in our system he’s very important, because he has the mid-range shot, three-point shot, rebounding. In the last seconds, he followed the ball with Larkin and Micic on the penetrations and he was great. We gave him confidence. Last year he was injured and we gave the same confidence to Sertac Sanli, and we won. This season Sertac left the team, I talked to him. ‘Why do you go to the second team? Why not stay with the champion to take one more title?’ I don’t know what he thinks about now, but it doesn’t matter. In our system it’s very important, Pleiss made a good job during the season, also Bryant Dunston with his old age, he put great character every time. In the semifinal, he played much better and made a great job. It’s a team, everybody knows his role and Pleiss made his role very good.

“It’s an emotional situation right now, at the end of the season we will see. As you know in the last three or four years we changed very small things. Sanli left, we brought in Petrusev. This season Simon had a health problem, we put Elijah Bryant on the team but we didn’t cut anybody. Now at the end of the season, we will consider everything and make decisions. This team has made history for the club, the country, for European basketball. For now, I don’t have any idea what will happen in the summer, we will think afterward about this.

“You know my confidence. For me, my team is an NBA team. Okay, this season we didn’t play like an NBA team, but in the previous season and everybody knows about the season that was canceled we dominated, played great basketball. This season, so-so.

“Micic is only 27 years old, he will have more career, and I believe he will have a chance to improve his record, like me. Maybe I am not young like him but we will try. He’s a good character, he’s a power point guard, he has developed incredibly during these four seasons. This season he had some ups and downs, but at the most important time, he played great. He can play defense, make difficult shots, he has good penetrations. So what else from a point guard?!

“It’s nice to be an outsider. I’m an outsider coach because I’m coming from Turkey. Before, nobody from Turkey made these results. I enjoy this job, I am a different kind of person. I enjoy coaching, I enjoy press conferences, interviews. Sometimes I enjoy making complaints to EuroLeague and they punish me. I give them money, I am a sponsor to them, but now I will take my bonus for the championship so I enjoy my job. And if somebody considers me a good coach or not a good coach, or they say you have on your team Larkin and Micic, that’s okay, no problem.

“I don’t know [about the NBA]. Maybe it’s better to ask my son, you already know Junior Ataman. And now my family, my wife and two daughters. They already studied Miami. Maybe someone will call us and ask us, I don’t know, it’s not my decision.”

Pablo Laso, Real Madrid head coach:

“Firstly, congratulations to Efes for the victory. It was a long season for all of us and I have to be proud of my players for the way they stuck together the whole year, until the last minute. Right now it’s a sad moment for all of us, we were so close, but that’s part of life, part of basketball. Congratulate Efes and try to pass this out of our head as fast as possible.

“We were 1 point down and it was a difficult thing to decide. It’s true that now, when you lose, the easy thing is that we should have fouled. But I thought that with the time remaining, more than 3 seconds, we could have defended and got the last possession. We didn’t get a clean rebound and we couldn’t attack. They played very smart that possession, they got a three, they missed it, but we couldn’t get a clean rebound. If you ask me now should we have fouled, we should have fouled. But I don’t know what would have happened.

“Obviously, I’m upset. The team has worked hard to reach this game, and I think we did a lot of things well. But we failed to break the game at any time with more offensive rhythm. The shooting percentages didn’t go with us. Against a team with the talent of Efes, if they score 58 points I think your defensive plan has worked very well. Offensively, when I look at the number of assists and the percentages, I don’t think that was too bad either. But saying all this doesn’t help, because we lost a final. Right now I don’t have much in my head to think of the game, because I’m upset to have lost the game.

“We were very competitive all season. We had better moments and worse moments, but we always worked hard and I congratulate the players for their season. There were 16 EuroLeague teams who didn’t take part in this game.

“I never considered us dead. We had problems and when you lose in sports, things always look bad, but I don’t see it that way. From tomorrow we can start to think more positively, but tonight we can only think that we were one shot from winning the title. A lot of the time in basketball, if you score baskets everything is easier. We had moments tonight when we played very good basketball, and I sincerely don’t think that we could have changed many things. When you lose, you can go crazy thinking about what you could do differently. But I don’t think that way, I value the work the guys did in the game. It hasn’t been easy but we did very well.

Gaby [Deck] is very important for us. From the first day, we knew we had a big player with us and every player has different talents. It would be stupid for us not to use that talent and that’s the hardest part for a coach – to get somebody on the team. For example, when a guy gets injured everybody says...ah, they lost this player. For a coach, the problem is not when he gets hurt but when he gets back on the team. So with Gaby, I have this feeling. We lost him, we got him back 10 months later. And when we built the team, he was not here. Probably the same situation with Randolph. That’s an adjustment you have to make as a coach, but I have a lot of respect for my players because they understood how important Gaby could be for our season.”

Vasilije Micic, Anadolu Efes Istanbul:

“I just don’t think too much [in clutch moments]. I try to live in the moment. That’s something I like about advice from Coach Ataman because he understands what it means to play in the moment. And if you believe in that, it’s really difficult to stop. You can find a way sometimes, but in the course of 40 minutes, it’s difficult to predict what you’re going to do. I just try to check what is going on in the moment, and then whether it’s a drive or a shot, I try to make the best decisions. That’s all, just play spontaneous and with hard work behind the scenes.

"All these shots I’m taking, I’ve already shot so many times in my life. Nothing surprises me. When you analyze it seems like we’re doing something special, but I would say more that we play in the moment, spontaneously, and believe in each other. I come into a game without a plan. It doesn’t mean I don’t respect a game plan, we have worked on a game plan for four years. But all the decisions I make in the moment, and that’s how you really put a defense in problems. If you have specific preparations, it’s easier to stop.”