Euroleague Basketball’s MVP for March, Wade Baldwin of Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv, sat down with Frankie Sachs to review his and his team’s big month, discuss the top offensive guards in the competition and look ahead to what’s next.
Wade Baldwin, March MVP: ‘We're going to do what needs to be done’
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Wade Baldwin is well aware that individual awards do not come without team success. For the second season in a row, he led Maccabi to a perfect March and this time it came after some struggles earlier in the season.
“There's always a month where people are a little bit worried about things. That happened. That was January for us,” Baldwin explains. “In March, it seemed like we won every close game and came back and did the opposite.”
When reviewing his most impressive performance of the season, a 30-point, 10-assist outburst in Round 30’s come-from-behind win over LDLC ASVEL Villeurbanne, Baldwin also wanted to focus on his team’s defense.
“What's forgotten about is how we got there,” Baldwin said. “We're killing guys defensively. We're much better than we were in the first half of the season and that's kind of what's triggered our momentum.”
As Maccabi heads into the final games of the regular season with an outside chance of climbing into sixth place, Baldwin showed a perspective that is focusing both on the immediate task at hand as well as the big picture.
“The Final Four is what everyone plays for. It's what everyone trains for in the summer,” he reminds us all. “But this is the EuroLeague and so many different things happen every week. Seems like there's new news, a new injury, a new player that comes alive and then starts playing well. So you got to take this one game at a time.”