{"id":30306,"date":"2010-12-02T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-02T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/sofo-it-was-a-team-effort-its-fun-to-play-together\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T08:36:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:36:16","slug":"sofo-it-was-a-team-effort-its-fun-to-play-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/sofo-it-was-a-team-effort-its-fun-to-play-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Sofo: \u201cIt was a team effort; it\u2019s fun to play together.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"


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By Amy Samin<\/FONT>

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Maccabi\u2019s head coach, David Blatt<\/B>, said after his team\u2019s victory, \u201cFirst of all, we at Maccabi want to deliver our sincere condolences to the families of those killed in the horrible disaster that took place today in Israel.
Our hearts are with you.
In addition, we of course wish a full recovery to all who were injured.
Our game is a lot less important on such a difficult day for Israel, but from a sports standpoint we achieved an important, tough, and I think also impressive victory.
It\u2019s very difficult to play here in Kaunas, it\u2019s a very strong home court, and the fact is they hadn\u2019t lost here this season until today.
\u017dalgiris is also our direct competitor for first place in our group, so this was in effect a double victory for us.\u201d<\/FONT>

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\u201cWe still have a lot to accomplish this season, but we\u2019ve taken an important step forward.
It was a very complicated game, with a lot of shifts in momentum.
There were good and bad decisions made by the players and coaches of both teams, but in the end our ability to play defense brought us the victory.
We forced them to make 28 turnovers at home and that is amazing at this level.
I said after the loss to Bnei Hasharon that we aren\u2019t going to give up on a single game and we didn\u2019t, even when we were in a tough situation here when all the momentum was on the side of \u017dalgiris.\u201d<\/FONT>
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<\/EMBED><\/P>

\u201cWe didn\u2019t shoot well from behind the arc but the most important one, Chucky made \u2013 a three from a winner, because that\u2019s what he is.
The player who pushed us to this win all week was Sofo.
At every practice he was great.
He showed maturity, character, and leadership.
He cheered everyone on and gave everything.
He gave us the energy to win.\u201d<\/FONT>

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The team\u2019s center, Sofoklis Schortsanitis<\/B>, who was outstanding with 22 points and 6 rebounds, said, \u201cIt was a team effort.
My teammates found me a lot under the basket and helped me score.
I practiced very hard this week because that\u2019s what Coach Blatt wanted from me, and I decided to work as hard as I could because there was a period I wasn\u2019t at my best.
I\u2019ve been working hard on my defense, because Coach says everything starts with defense.
We are a great team.
The players and the staff here are great and it\u2019s fun to play here.
They fouled me a lot tonight and my hand really hurt; it was killing me.
But I stayed calm and tried to make my free throws and to look for my teammates and to score baskets.\u201d<\/FONT>

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\"\"<\/P>



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www.samintranslations.com<\/U><\/FONT><\/A> <\/FONT><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv is happy with their win, they haven\u2019t forgotten the events unfolding at home. Blatt: \u201cOur game is a lot less important on such a difficult day for Israel.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-30306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":495804,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30306\/revisions\/495804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30306"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=30306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}