Catching Barca

First of all, I’d like to congratulate everyone at CSKA – players, coaching staff, management – upon reaching the club’s eighth consecutive Final Four, which is an incredible achievement. I have to say, CSKA has shown an outstanding improvement over the course of the season. With the rough start and all the injuries they’ve had to deal with, making it all the way to the Final Four is a truly remarkable feat. That, combined with triumphs in the Russian Cup and VTB United League, is a clear indication that the team has left those early difficulties behind and is now ready for the exciting rematch of last season’s semifinals versus Barcelona.

Real Madrid faced the Catalonians earlier in the play-offs and it was a very difficult series. We managed to win one game on their court but they stepped up and got two victories in Madrid. It turned out, we were not good enough to win the clash or take it to the fifth game in Barcelona. They were better than us, and now we just have to work hard to bridge the gap and get closer to their level.

Barcelona is surely going to be a tough match-up for CSKA. But then again, the whole Final Four tournament is set to be extremely competitive this year, given that Olympiakos has had the goal of winning the Euroleague since the start of the season and Partizan has already upset both Panathinaikos and Maccabi, which makes them much more than just a dark horse. Partizan’s success, by the way, can be largely attributed to the fantastic work of their coach Dusko Vujosevic and the club’s consistency over the recent years. Despite losing players, they’ve always managed to find new ways of keeping themselves afloat and eventually got back to the Final Four stage.

Partizan’s success, by the way, can be largely attributed to the fantastic work of their coach Dusko Vujosevic

Speaking of Real Madrid, for sure personally we’re unhappy not to be there this season. But at the same time, we know we need to improve to become a powerful team. This year we had to go through a number of adjustments and had a problem finding balance and defining which players would consistently come through. Injuries also meddled heavily with the squad, forcing guys in and out and depriving us of the chance to build a true hierarchy within the team. The ups-and-downs in team work and individual performances did not let us decide who can carry the team and therefore deserves more minutes. That resulted in insecurity and inconsistency while a club has to be consistent throughout the season in order to be considered a Final Four-caliber side. Well, I can assure you that we’ll work hard to get there in 2010-11.

As for now, we have decided to sign a new player, Morris Almond. He is a very intriguing guy who can play shooting guard and small forward positions. Almond has tons of athleticism and can really score the ball. His career included playing in the NBA for the Utah Jazz and, prior to that, for the Rice University basketball program. Rice University is an excellent school academically, and the fact that Morris attended it shows he’s an intelligent young man and a good person on and off the court. I believe he’ll form a good backcourt duo with Sergio Llull and it’ll strengthen our perimeter game.

At the same time, we’re currently really pushing our young players Velickovic, Llull and Tomic to improve. And it’s encouraging to see them responding to the demands really well. They are giving us one more reason to be optimistic not only for the near future, but also for the years that’ll follow.

Right now our main goal is to preserve our hold on the second position in the ACB League and thus secure home court advantage for all play-off series until the Finals. It’s going to be a difficult postseason because in Spain the first round is actually a best-of-3 series, not best-of-5. So, there’s a lot of space for possible upsets. At this point everybody in Spain is wondering who’ll get to play Unicaja, a club that’s had a tough season but now is peaking at the right moment. Honestly, though, I believe that any team strong enough to qualify for the play-offs will make a dangerous first-round opponent.

We have lots of time to run practices, to break down defensive and offensive schemes, to teach players without exhausting them along the way

Every game is important for Real Madrid at this stage but I think we have to take the forthcoming encounter with Caja Laboral especially seriously. Meanwhile, it’s noteworthy that we’re now looking at the part of our schedule where we’ll be in the “1-game-per-week” mode for about 5 weeks. Frankly speaking, it somewhat resembles preseason. We have lots of time to run practices, to break down defensive and offensive schemes, to teach players without exhausting them along the way. It’s something that rarely happens during the season. I’ll do my best to ensure that we take the biggest possible advantage of this five-week period both individually and as a team. Hopefully, we’ll be ready to take on the rest of Spain in the play-offs that’ll start about two weeks after the Final Four in Paris.

I’d also like to add that I received a very kind invitation from Andrey Vatutin to visit CSKA during the Final Four. At the moment I don’t know if I’ll be able to come because Real Madrid is scheduled to play a regular-season game on Sunday, May 9th. But if that clash is moved to Saturday as expected, I’ll come to Paris the following day and hopefully will be cheering for the Moscow club in the big Final.