Spahija: “It’s important to win this way”

Coach Spahija: “It was an amazing evening. I want to congratulate both the coaching staff and the players for the preparation for this game. To beat Fener is always important and big, but to win the game the way we did is even more important. What I want to say is we started playing aggressive on defense from the first minute and we managed to that until the end of the game. Coming to this game after two losses against such opponents is really impressive”. Coach Spahija also complimented the fans: “We will rest and continue our way, and with our fans.  The fans were amazing and helped us a lot. Together we can do great things together this year”.

Coach Spahija added: “There wasn’t anything specific for this win besides the effort, staying close to them and be disciplined. The coaches are doing amazing job preparing for this games. There’s a lot of basketball knowledge in our locker room. But if you’re not disciplined and committed to execute the instructions it creates a lot mistakes because we are playing against teams at the same level or against better teams. In order to beat Fener a lot of things have to fall into place with players having to step up and show what they are capable of doing. DeShaun Thomas deserves a lot of credit for playing injured and not giving up”.

Coach Spahija also addressed Cole and Jackson’s great game together: “We have size issues with the players. It’s not easy to play with two guards together especially against a team with such big players. We took a risk playing like that with them playing together and not replacing each other”. About the long season coach Spahija added: “It’s not easy to continue like this. It’s a season of 70-80 games and in my opinion to present such ability in each game is unrealistic, but we will do our best to always play in this level”.

“We tried to prepare ourselves for the aggressive defense with which Maccabi opened the game. They were tough on defense and played the way they wanted to play”, summarized coach Obradovic. “We looked bad right from the beginning of the game, but then we regrouped and came back to being only four points behind at halftime which was a cause to relax and try to play our game as usual, but we only managed to that for several minutes as we started playing the way we did at the beginning of the game. Maccabi played with great will and they deserved to win”.  

“I’m a coach and my job is to figure out what didn’t work”, Obradovic added as he chose to focus on his own team: “With all due respect to Maccabi, we played our worst game of the season in the EuroLeague this year, Maccabi didn’t surprise me at all with the way they played”.  Coach Obradovic also addressed the issue of playing two games in a week: “The load we’re experiencing is just like all the other teams, this is the second year we are playing in with the same schedule. What is the main thing a basketball player wants to do? To play basketball. If your opponent manages to run like that early in the game, it’s not due the schedule. The main thing you need to have is will, if you don’t have the will than it’s very hard to compete”.