«I'm in love with Olympiacos»!
Maccabi Tel Aviv is a huge chapter in his career plus it's his one great love, however, David Blatt unequivocally states to be in love with Olympiacos!
"I had been there for nine years, it was a very important piece of my career. I have been in this position again with other teams. As a coach of Efes, of Darusafaka… But all of this is a part of my professional life", the 'reds' coach commented in view of tomorrow's (25/10, 21.00 CET) game against the People's Team at the SEF and went on to say: "It was a special place, a special team, we succeeded a lot together, but now I'm 100% with Olympiacos. I'm in love with this place. That's how it should be … There's a great song by Stephen Stills, "Love the one you're with". And I'm with Olympiacos and he's the only one I'm thinking about!"
Referring to the game, he pointed out: "It is obviously going to be a tough game, just like any other game for the Euroleague. I hope we react after our loss in our last game against Armani and play like we did in the first two games for the season. Maccabi is a very good team, strong, athletic. They have big bodies, great depth in the bench. We know it's going to be a tough game and we need to be good on both sides of the floor to be able to win".
When asked to comment on the doubtful participation of Scottie Wilbekin, he replied… "Who says he's not playing? It depends on who you hear and who says so… I will be using a known Iliad phrase: Be careful of the Greeks bearing gifts!" I don't pay any attention to all of that. We need to be playing basketball. Whoever comes on the floor needs to be playing. We need to be ready. We have prepared for that and we'll be doing the best we can to contain a very strong offensive team".
The American - Israel coach left the possibility of Strelnieks playing open (he did not play against Armani due to injury)… "He's gradually trying to come back and get into rhythm. It's a decision we are going to be making before the game. Today he made part of practice. We'll see how he's going to be tomorrow. We're gonna be deciding just before the game".
When asked to send a message to the fans, he said: "I had said I was disappointed that we didn't perform any better in our first home game. This wasn't so because we hadn't wanted to be better. It seemed we ran out of energy and just collapsed after 2.5 quarters into the game. Not due to desire but rather due to energy according to my opinion. Our opponent also was shooting much better than us and played at a much higher energy level. We need to reverse that tomorrow. We want to make our fans happy. This is important to us and our team. We are going to give them our best performance possible".
«We won't let you down»
Janis Strelnieks stressed: "It's going to be a tough game for us, because we lost the previous one at home and we need to correct this. We'll need to try hard. On the other hand, this is a huge motive. I'm looking forward to the game. We need to be playing our game, play as a team to get the win. It's good that the game against Armani was only days before. Our preparation is going to be similar. So we need to fix all these things that we did not execute correctly in our last game and I think that everything is going to be fine. My message to the Olympiacos fans is this: "We always try to be the best team we can on the floor. We hope they support us and that we don't let them down".