{"id":500406,"date":"2017-03-08T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/simpson-ready-for-my-first-game-teammates-are-helping-me-find-my-place\/"},"modified":"2017-03-08T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-08T10:00:00","slug":"simpson-ready-for-my-first-game-teammates-are-helping-me-find-my-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/simpson-ready-for-my-first-game-teammates-are-helping-me-find-my-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Simpson: &#8220;Ready for my first game. Teammates are helping me find my place&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"direction: ltr; text-align: justify;\"> \t<span style=\"font-size:14px;\">The first game of the Euroleague season ended in dramatic fashion when Sylvan Landesberg was almost able to tie the ball game after a <\/span><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">quarteback<\/span><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">-type pass from Guy Pnini. But only &#8216;almost&#8217; as Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv lost 99-97 playing at Milan vs. EA7 Emporio Armani Milan. A lot has happened since that game, mostly negative for both teams who will meet again on Thursday (21:00), this time at the Menora Mivtachim arena in Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n<p> \tMaccabi will get back Joe Alexander and probably Devin Smith, both following injuries and will see<\/span><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">first<\/span><span style=\"font-size:14px;\"> action from last week&#8217;s addition, Daimon Simpson. The team will still miss injured players, Andrew Goudelock and Quincy Miller. Following the last practice, team members spoke with the media:<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span style=\"font-size:14px;\">Coach <strong>Ainars Bagatskis<\/strong>: &#8220;We had good quality practices in the past days, especially from the new guys Nimrod Levy, Joe Alexander and Daimon Simpson. I think that&#8217;s what we were missing in the past month, so we prepared well. We know Milano, there are not many surprises, just like we are not surprising for them. The mental preparation to start the game with aggressive basketball is important&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span style=\"font-size:14px;\"><strong>Daimon Simpson<\/strong>: &#8220;I&#8217;m ready for my first game. We had some good practices this week, guys have stepped up. I&#8217;m in pretty good shape. Still searching for my place but coaches and teammates are good and helping me. Probably for this team I can play the 5 because the coach wants to speed things up and we have a lot of shooting 4&#8217;s. We know Milan is a fast-paced team so we will try to slow down their tempo&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span style=\"font-size:14px;\"><strong>Joe Alexander<\/strong>: &#8220;I still have a ways to go, i&#8217;m pretty limited but I feel like I can go out and give the team some minutes, set screens and run the floor. We feel excited to play, whether we&#8217;re in the playoffs or not. We have our own personal pride and it&#8217;s Maccabi Tel Aviv vs. Milan and that&#8217;s something to be excited about&#8221;<\/span><br \/> \t\u00a0<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The yellows will host Milan on Thursday (21:00). The new addition: &#8220;I&#8217;ll probably play at the 5 spot&#8221;. Joe Alexander will be active, Devin Smith is probable<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":500405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-500406","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\/500406","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=500406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500406"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=500406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}