Tough times logic
Before we start discussing basketball matters, I’d like to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all the people I know in Moscow and to all CSKA fans. I really miss everyone; you are a big part of my life!
2009 was a good but at the same time tough year. At CSKA, we won the Superleague, went all the way to the final game of the Euroleague. Still, as I’ve mentioned more than once here after years of success it was really hard to find motivation for everybody. And losing that Panathinaikos game definitely left a bitter aftertaste.
It was also a year marked by a very difficult decision to part ways with the Moscow club and move to Madrid to take on the challenge of turning various pieces into a system while fighting off the anxiety stemming from the fact that the club hasn’t been to the Final Four for a long time. We enjoyed a strong three-month stretch early this season which, frankly, was sort of uncommon given all the drastic personnel changes at the club. And right now because of injuries we’re facing tough times having dropped four in a row in the Spanish league in December. Which is just not normal, by the way.
At the same time, I can find certain logic in what we’re going through. You see, if you want to accomplish something meaningful, you have to suffer on your way to the goal. And this exactly is our moment of suffering. For the first three months of the season we were winning games and getting praise from everyone around, the expectations were met and surpassed. But the adversity was bound to come and it came in the form of injuries. And not only that. We’re still shaping our game, still trying to set priorities and define a hierarchy inside the team.
Right now despite all the injuries we have to start taking it one step, one game at a time, try to restore our confidence. I can’t say I’m not worried at all, but in my career and my life beyond the basketball court I’ve had a number of moments similar to this one. That’s why I know for sure that if you’re serious about what you’re doing, if you work hard and stay together you can always turn things around. It’s also important to mention that at the moment I feel absolutely no pressure from the management of the club. The people in charge here understand the situation and have the ability to look ahead. I want to reiterate that the start of the season was deceivingly amazing. You can not just assemble a team and immediately reach the Final Four. It doesn’t work that way. It takes years. Maybe we’ll need one, maybe three – I don’t know. What I know is with hard work and right decisions we’ll get where we want to be. The great Alexandar Nikolic, father of Yugoslavian basketball who mentored thousands of European coaches including Zelimir Obradovic, always said that a team with a new coach and new players needed at least one year to really learn how to function together as a group. I realize that in modern basketball with its level of competition and sky-high expectations you can not ask for a full season, but it’s still inevitable that a new group of players and coaches will require at least several months to gel.
Don’t forget, by the way, that we’re still in the first place in our Euroleague group, still in the hunt for the Copa del Rey and not so far behind in ACB. Hopefully, soon we’ll have Sergio Llull, Felipe Reyes and all the injured players back in uniform and our latest addition, Marko Jaric, will surely help us a lot.
Marko’s career took off to a great start in Bologna, and then he went on to have a good stint in the NBA. But he was also was a key player on Serbian National Team which failed to live up to the expectations, particularly at the Eurobasket 2005 in Belgrade. That’s why the skepticism towards Marko’s decision to return to Europe and play at the highest level and under intense pressure is understandable. But I think that he came back with clear mind, he realizes that this is a very good opportunity for him. Actually, Jaric himself offered to come to Real Madrid without even discussing financial terms. That’s very unusual, if not to say unheard of. Moreover, now he’s married with a baby daughter and as a person he’s very different to that younger, aggressive Jaric whom I coached in Bologna. I hope he’ll be very helpful for our team not only this season, but also in the future. It’ll be a very interesting journey for both of us and for Real Madrid as well.
Personally, it’s always been an honor for me to know that a player wants to join a team partly because I’m in charge there. But I’ve never used my personal connections to push a guy or somehow force him to come to the club where I’m coaching at the moment. That’s mostly because you have to realize that everybody changes in the long run. Four or five years in professional sport are like a decade in some other fields. It’s a whole lot of time, and every person changes with the experience he gains. Like, Matjaz Smodis I coached in Bologna is not Matjaz Smodis I met several years later in Moscow. And Ramunas Siskauskas with whom I worked at Benetton is completely different to the player who’s now starring for CSKA. It’s just good to know that players you coached have fond memories of you, even though you had to be harsh with them sometimes.
The only thing that makes me sad right now (and, by the way, reminds me of what happened at CSKA with Matjaz Smodis and Tomas van den Spiegel) is that really nice guys suffer serious injuries. I mean, this is the worst part – to lose players who not only give their all on the court but also have outstanding personalities.
Somehow, our current situation reminds me of what Spanish National Team had to go through at the latest Eurobasket. They didn’t do well at first, had to deal with injuries to Jorge Garbajosa and Pau Gasol – all that made coach Scariolo look like somebody who didn’t understand the game of basketball (according to some remarks in the media, that is). But they didn’t look for excuses, stuck together (and I mean not only players and coaches but Spanish basketball federation and its President as well), brought back the injured players and finally blossomed when it mattered most.
