{"id":32037,"date":"2012-02-17T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-17T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blatt-our-mission-is-to-win-titles\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T08:42:01","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:42:01","slug":"blatt-our-mission-is-to-win-titles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/blatt-our-mission-is-to-win-titles\/","title":{"rendered":"Blatt: \u201cOur mission is to win titles.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Amy Samin<\/FONT>
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David Blatt<\/B> was excited after winning his second straight Israel Cup as head coach of Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv. \u201cThis is a very complex season, with a lot going on, and we still came to this game to play good, enjoyable and attractive basketball. It\u2019s very important to our fans. Our mission is to win titles, and I think that so far in this atypical season we\u2019ve done very well.\u201d<\/FONT>
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The coach had plenty of praise for the star of the evening, \u201cLangford was excellent, he\u2019s one of the best guards in Europe, but for some reason he doesn\u2019t get recognition here in Israel, not as a player and not as a person.\u201d The coach went on to explain what motivated the team to win the Cup: \u201cWe wanted those who had never won a title to have that experience.\u201d As to which cup victory was the sweetest, the coach quoted the team\u2019s chairman, Shimon Mizrahi: \u201cThe sweetest cup victory is the most recent one.\u201d<\/FONT> <\/P>

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Blatt also had good things to say about Rishon Lezion: \u201cI salute coach Effi Birenboim on what he\u2019s doing with his team. It was fun for me personally and an honor to coach against one of the best coaches in the country. Credit also goes to the fans of Rishon; they support their team in the best possible way.\u201d<\/FONT>
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Game MVP Keith Langford<\/B> said, \u201cI was very disappointed in myself in the semifinal game, especially in the first half, so these last few days I really just took it upon myself to lock in and refocus, and not be the guy who was the weak link. Today, the game got off to a good start, and I\u2019m definitely happy to be in this spot right now, because those guys [Rishon Lezion] definitely played a tough game. This is the first title I\u2019ve won in my career so far, and hopefully it won\u2019t be the last one I\u2019ll win with Maccabi. It\u2019s exactly for this reason that I came to the team. We\u2019ve had a few tough moments this season, but we\u2019re getting better week by week.\u201d<\/FONT> <\/P>

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Team captain Tal Burstein, <\/B>who was one of the top scorers in the game,<\/B> said, \u201cIt\u2019s a special victory for me, because it\u2019s my first as captain. It was also an honor to have the President [Shimon Peres] here. Every cup is special and every title is a lot of fun. We work really hard for this, and we\u2019re always happy to win titles. It\u2019s what gives us the energy to go on.\u201d<\/FONT>
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Richard Hendrix<\/B> (10 points and 9 rebounds) added, \u201cWe have a lot of respect for Rishon Lezion, but we\u2019re happy to have won the cup. We always play with heart. Keith was unbelievable tonight; he started strong and hung in there. I hope we\u2019ll give the fans more moments like this one. We\u2019re playing well in all three leagues, and we hope to win more titles.\u201d<\/FONT> <\/P>

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Forward Guy Pnini<\/B> noted, \u201cIt\u2019s our first title this season, one of four. It\u2019s a lot of fun. We\u2019ve come a long way to reach this moment. It\u2019s been a long road with a lot of games, and we can finally say that we\u2019ve won a title \u2013 it\u2019s an amazing feeling. We still have three more goals for this season, though we\u2019re not really looking quite that far ahead yet. We\u2019re looking at our next goal \u2013 on Sunday we have an away game against Hapoel Jerusalem, which is an important game for the club. We have tonight to celebrate, we\u2019ll go to [restaurant] 206 to celebrate and eat, and then we\u2019ll go home and get some sleep.\u201d<\/FONT>
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Point guard Yogev Ohayon<\/B> summed things up: \u201cIt\u2019s the first title of my career, and it\u2019s a wonderful, amazing feeling. I\u2019m happy, and it\u2019s given me an appetite for more titles. As a team, we\u2019re having a great season, meeting the demands and goals we\u2019ve put on ourselves. We want to keep winning and to do everything we need to do to make our fans happy and to keep on our path. I hope we\u2019ll have a lot more titles as time goes on; I can\u2019t describe how excited I am. It\u2019s a kind of satisfaction I\u2019ve waited a long time for. I can\u2019t wait to celebrate, and I\u2019ll say it again: I want more!\u201d<\/FONT>
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www.samintranslations.com<\/U><\/FONT><\/A> <\/FONT><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The head coach of Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv celebrated his victory and praised his MVP: \u201cLangford is one of the best guards in Europe. We came to the game tonight to play good, enjoyable and attractive basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-32037","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\/32037","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=32037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":496713,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32037\/revisions\/496713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32037"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=32037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}