It’s not acceptable, but it’s human

For sure, this is a difficult moment for CSKA. It’s tough for everybody – coach Vujosevic, management, players. That’s how it is, if things don’t go well, everyone has to bear a share of responsibility. I just want to wish all the luck in the world to this group of players – guys who’ve proven over the years that they are not only exceptionally good at basketball, but are also the heart of this club. I’m sure they’ll fight until the last drop of blood to get into the Top 16. It won’t be easy for the Red Army club but I believe the players will once again step up and at least do their best to ensure that CSKA doesn’t fall out of the Euroleague picture early even for one year.

Before counting these guys out and considering them dead, one has to recall the tremendous achievements they’ve put together over the recent years. I think we should stand by this group and give them our support for the remainder of the season. One more person who should be supported is the interim coach Dmitriy Shakulin who right now faces a difficult task of helping the players return to their top form.

CSKA will also need some good luck. The team has been plagued by injuries for a while, and in modern sports if a certain number of top-level players go down, it could prove outright impossible to find replacements for them. Any team with such number of health issues is doomed to struggle.

It won’t be easy for the Red Army club but I believe the players will once again step up and at least do their best to ensure that CSKA doesn’t fall out of the Euroleague

As for Real Madrid, when I’m writing this the team is coming off an excellent game versus Olympiakos. We fell to the Greek side in the opening game of the Euroleague this season, and I think that a month and a half that separated two Olympiakos clashes for us were full of situations that eventually helped us get better – as persons first, basketball team second. Prior to the Sunday’s Gran Canaria game we were in the first place in the Spanish league, and we’re also tied with Olympiakos at the top of our Euroleague group.

Still, problems persist. In both tournaments we happened to drop games to the teams that usually reside near the bottom of the table – Alicante and Charleroi. There’s a simple and obvious way to explain that. We’re quite young with four 23-24-year-olds in starting five and we’ve had several stretches of good results. We went into that Alicante game having won four in a row, and the situation prior to the Charleroi match-up was similar. And each time it seemed like we were taking a breather, thinking we could win without giving our all. I’d say it’s human. It’s not acceptable, it should be corrected, but it’s human. Each time we started the game a little bit too passively, home team jumped on a lead, and all of a sudden we were getting more and more nervous, even scared. And being young, it’s very hard for us to turn around a game that started badly. Maybe we can pull it off at home, but it’s impossible for us right now to stage such comebacks in away games.

By the way, that’s another reason I was extremely pleased with the Olympiacos win. In that game we kept our composure for 40 minutes. We remained calm and steady in such an important match, perhaps for the first time this season. We didn’t rush shots, we shared the ball, and had a good inside-outside balance. As a result, some of our young players, especially Sergio Llull and Sergio Rodríguez had a very impressive game, proving this backcourt duo could really shine in Europe for the years to come.

Sure, it was only one game. But victories like this give us a good deal of confidence going forward; they make us feel that we’re on the right track with our everyday work.

We compete in two great leagues and in the environment that traditionally doesn’t have a lot of patience

It’s fun working with a young team like this, by the way. We have a lot of talent everywhere – point guard position, shooting guard position, small forward with Carlos Suárez and Novica Velickovic, power forward where behind Felipe Reyes and Jorge Garbajosa we have one of the most interesting young players in Europe in Nikola Mirotic, and Ante Tomic at center. So you go name it. And I knew right away from the start of the season that here we had a very intriguing young core that could really flourish with the help of veterans and could give us a lot of satisfaction – maybe not in the short term, but definitely in the mid- and long-term perspective.

Also, I’d like to mention that Pablo Prigioni has recently returned to the line-up following an injury. He played 12 solid minutes versus Olympiacos and hit an important three-pointer. Moreover, I think he took some of the pressure off Sergio Rodrigues, allowing him to have a great game of his own. His veteran presence had a distinct calming effect on the younger teammate.

The thing is, we compete in two great leagues and in the environment that traditionally doesn’t have a lot of patience. But we’ll learn. We’ll grow and learn how to deal with lots of stuff – including this lack of patience that surrounds us.