{"id":31702,"date":"2011-11-25T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-25T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blatt-we-played-a-fantastic-game-this-is-the-real-maccabi\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T08:40:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:40:45","slug":"blatt-we-played-a-fantastic-game-this-is-the-real-maccabi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/blatt-we-played-a-fantastic-game-this-is-the-real-maccabi\/","title":{"rendered":"Blatt: \u201cWe played a fantastic game; this is the real Maccabi\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Amy Samin<\/FONT> <\/P>

\u201cThis is what happens when we have three days to prepare and don\u2019t play back-to-back games,\u201d said Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv\u2019s head coach David Blatt <\/B>after Thursday night\u2019s win against EA7 Emporio Armani Milano. \u201cWe had a chance to let the guys rest. It was an exceptional game; we played fantastic.\u201d<\/FONT>
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In addition to complementing the team as a whole, the coach singled out a couple of players: \u201cWe got an amazing game from Sofo and Farmar. Last season Sofo was named to the All-Euroleague First Team, and tonight he played like an All-Euroleague starter. He\u2019s a very special guy, and today was just one of those days when things went his way and he gave us one of his best performances ever in the Euroleague.\u201d As for Farmar, Blatt noted: \u201cWhen Farmar has his head in the game, obviously our team looks different. We needed to come back after that loss [on Sunday]. That\u2019s the way it works in Maccabi, and we responded as we should.\u201d<\/FONT>
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Maccabi has taken more than a little criticism in the press this season on the subject of rebounding. In Thursday\u2019s game against Armani Milano Maccabi out-rebounded their opponent 41 to 22, and the coach also had a few words to say about that: \u201cWe work on rebounding constantly and we\u2019ve improved significantly. As I\u2019ve said before, when we have time to rest things improve.\u201d Blatt responded to a question about what Maccabi did to win this game [after losing by seven points in their first meeting with Milano]. \u201cMilano is deadly on offense, and I think we threw them completely off their game. If you can do that, you\u2019ll win the game. We played this game to win, and to win by more than seven points; we accomplished both.\u201d<\/FONT> <\/P>

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Game MVP Sofoklis Schortsanitis <\/B>(28 points): \u201cIt was a good game, and one that we had to win. The most important thing is when somebody goes down, how fast is he getting back up, and today we proved that we\u2019re a team that gets up fast and remembers where we came from, and that\u2019s what we did today.\u201d When asked how it was playing against fellow Greek Ioannis Bourousis, Sofo replied, \u201cIt was a great matchup, and it was fun to play against him. He\u2019s a good friend, but when you\u2019re on the court the thing that matters is winning.\u201d<\/FONT>
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Jordan Farmar <\/B>(21 <\/B>points): \u201cIn order to win you have to make your shots. We fought against injuries and illness, and everyone gave everything they had. We know how hard on ourselves we are. We want to be successful, we put ourselves in a situation and we expect to win every game we play, in all three leagues that we\u2019re playing in. We understand the importance of every game and this one tonight, too.\u201d<\/FONT>
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Yogev Ohayon<\/B>, who scored four points and made five assists, added: \u201cI\u2019m happy the shots went in tonight. This game was a really important one for us, not only to make up for the loss on Sunday but also for the rest of the season. I\u2019m happy that everyone played with their hearts, and that was expressed in the result. We were first on every ball.\u201d<\/FONT><\/P>

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

Game MVP Sofoklis Schortsanitis summed things up: \u201cThe most important thing when somebody goes down is how fast he is getting back up.\u201d David Blatt: \u201cWe played a fantastic game, that\u2019s how it is when you get a chance to sleep.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-31702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-54"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31702","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=31702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":496565,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31702\/revisions\/496565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31702"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=31702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}