Let’s start with the season just ended by Fenerbahce. A crazy start of Euroleague, a 9-1 start with a basketball of the highest level but, in the end, during the building of the team. A new team, which had to get to know each other… Did you expect such an instant result? What was the magic ingredient?
The beginning of that kind surprised the insiders but, in a way, so did we. We didn’t expect to start that way, playing good basketball. Also because we had a somewhat difficult preparation, both for the unavailability of some players and for the lack of the coach engaged with the national team until mid-September. It was certainly an unexpected departure, but it made us realize that the work of building the roster had made sense, we had to continue to grow according to the expectations we had during the summer. It was good to see some evaluations confirmed on the pitch.
What happened after that 9-1? A fairly long period of difficulty, almost as unexpected as the beginning? How did you then straighten the ship to earn those Playoffs that with a start like that for which we would not be able to give any other definition if not “deserved”?
The reasoning could be many. It’s part of every season, the fact of being a bit on a rollercoaster of situations and performance. We ourselves, after all, managed to stay in the first 4-5 spots for 33 games out of 34: in the last game we fell to 8th place, putting us in a position to face the team that had deserved the title of champion of the Regular Season. We were in the 4-5 place for the whole season! If we look at the numbers we have suffered many physical problems: there are seasons that are made like this. We invest in Scottie Wilbekin as the technical leader of the team and end up having Scottie Wilbekin out for over 3 months. I don’t even enter into the Bjelica speech because Nemanja has never been able to express herself. I don’t remember in recent years such a tough season, even if all the injuries came from bad luck. A blow here, a wrong fall, a wrong movement on the contact under the basket… if one makes an examination and tries to understand a constant cause, he does not find it here! We were a bit unlucky, as happens to many during the season. With the first injuries and problems, the winning chemistry has been somewhat lost. We also got out of hand some games in the last seconds, this certainly complicated the path. A good path because our goal was to enter the Playoffs, a little bittersweet when you realize that you have put yourself in a position to have the field factor if things had gone just a little differently. This is sport, this is basketball!
You talked about heavy injuries, but you still managed to qualify for the Playoffs. There were all the conditions to get to the front in the standings. How much can injuries affect the result of the season? Obviously, if you don’t have the technical leaders available, you can get to the bottom of the EuroLeague with so much competition, but how important is it to weather the storm? How important it is to maintain a balance between looking for excuses in injuries and moving forward anyway, in which Olimpia, Efes and may others lacked so much?
There is no exact formula. For me it is always the one with which I have always tried to live the result in its positivity or negativity: trying to maintain a balance that must be reflected on how you try to manage the situation. I think this kind of balance is important in the face of an irregular pattern, injuries that are repeated, some whistles that you can not digest. You have to have this balance because it represents what you can convey to the group. The athletes hear very well the reasoning that is made by those who manage them daily on and off the field. I think balance is the key to trying to reduce the damage of a negative moment. I was collecting a report that our medical and Strength & Conditioning staff prepared for me. Just to give you an idea, considering our roster, this season we lost 657 days of work, combining all the injuries. You can imagine, when you go to the math, that 657 days means that the players have added up almost 2 years of absence. As a manager, when you think about the budget regardless of the result and realize that you haven’t had the workforce available for so long, you realize the economic damage suffered. We must have balance in interpreting negativity: the season is made of unexpected events, pleasant things and others less, you have to be good at staying balanced in your actions and reactions.
Let’s move on to the individuals. One is Jonathan Motley, who played a super season. What struck us most is that there were some moments in which even full-blown veterans with a great pedigree relied on him, for his energy, even in crucial and difficult moments: for a rookie at this level, within a roster like that of Fener, it is something very special. The other is Carsen Edwards: he started quietly, in the end he turned out to be a key player, both for the contingencies of injuries and for the human adaptation to European basketball. Good job done in the construction of the roster, it is appropriate to say…
I think Motley was not a surprise, since we bet on him decisively in the summer: the signing was even quite fast, because Itoudis had faced him several times in VTB, I had happened to follow him since the days of Baylor and in the year of Kuban, where he had also played a couple of friendlies in Istanbul where we had seen him up close. Over time he proved to be a clear point of reference for the team, perhaps the big man that could as energy and quality change the balance under the basket. In my opinion he has great room for improvement: I think he is the kind of player who can do very well in Europe, in the EuroLeague, for the NBA I think he is too much an in-between-4-and-5 but he has the quality to try equally on the one hand to improve and on the other to return to the League. He is still young: another year in the EuroLeague should complete him at the level of play. For him there is no habit of reading very carefully the opponents and what happens on the field: the experience in EL, at this level, is the ability to read better and better the situations that are created. On a different level, leaving aside the role, the same words apply to Carsen. Edwards was in effect a rookie in Europe: in the NBA he was never a real protagonist, but after a great career in college he never saw a type of basketball comparable to what is played in the high EuroLeague. It was not an easy process of acclimatization. I think he is a player who in Europe can do a lot for physical strength and ability to be able to find a way to shoot at every opportunity: from downtown, driving to the hoop, pull up j’s… He can continue to improve and become an important player at our level.