Blatt: «A very dangerous game»
Olympiacos is hosted by Buducnost on Friday (08/03, 19.00 CET), for the 25th round of the Euroleague and David Blatt together with Nigel Williams-Goss talked about the game against the Montenegro team.
Olympiacos left for Montenegro Thursday morning (07/03) where on Friday they play against Buducnost and the Piraeus team coach, david Blatt, talked about the game against the team of Jasmin Repesa. “First of all, we need the victory for many reasons. Buducnost, regardless of the record they have up to now in the competition, is a very good team, they have beaten CSKA Moscow at Montenegro, they have beaten Real Madrid, teams of the highest level of the competition, so there is no doubt that we have a great challenge ahead of us, a tough game that we need to be very well prepared for”, the ‘reds’ coach said at first.
He was then asked on whether he is troubled by the fact that Buducnost has many good shooters and whether defense will be the one to probably give the victory. “Many things are going to play a role. They have made many changes in many levels during the past months. They have four new quality players with their roster, so they are not the same team we easily beat at home in the first round”.
The coach of Olympiacos was the then asked on how he tried to turn the switch in the players’ minds following the five games lost in a row for the competition and whether during that time, following the loss to CSKA Moscow at the SEF, he worked more on the game tactics or the mental part. “I tried to focus on what is coming ahead of us and not on what has happened in the previous games. Right now, you can’t do anything about what has happened. We went through a difficult time, these things happen, look at the Boston Celtics, they have lost four or five games in a row and everyone is trying to knock them down. And then they got to beat Sacramento on the road and the Golden State Warriors and now everyone thinks that everything is fine. Things are never as good or as bad as they seem. You always have to try to for the best, on a daily basis, no matter what has happened or is happening at the moment, we need to try our best”.
The last question was in regard to the foundation of the Euroleague coaches’ association. The 60year old coach pointed out that “I’m happy for that. This is a very good thing. I hope and wish that we can make this association one that can help all the coaches and not just those with the Euroleague. This is the long term goal, of course for now, we need to be solving issues that are possible to come up. We need to build something good and upgrade the quality and value of this association. I think that this is something that we’ll be impacting all the coaches in Europe in a few years”.
On his part, Nigel Williams-Goss stated that “we have only six games left for the regular season to end and we know that we have to finish strong, to rank the best we can before the playoffs. We know that Buducnost is especially strong at home and they have beaten many great teams there. It’s going to be difficult, we feel ready to play well and it’s time to reverse the situation and win. Our defense is going to be the key, they are shooting well, so we need to stop them from finding rhythm through their offense. It is certain that defense is going to be the key”.