By Lefteris Moutis/ moytis@eurohoops.net
He understands perfectly why CSKA Moscow left Istanbul with empty hands, he acknowledges Olympiacos’ superiority and he warns that the best are yet to come for the Russians. That means Andrei Kirilenko is going to stay at Moscow for next season?
“That’s basketball. Olympiacos did a great job. They stole the momentum at the third quarter and they made us pay for this. I think we stopped playing set up offense. Our offense was stopped at that point and we tried to get easy points. For some reason we stopped playing too many pick and rolls or keep moving the ball. And minute by minute Olympiacos’ young guys gained confidence. They proved they have the mentality of a winning team and they deserve to be European champions. They played an excellent basketball game, at the second half”.
At the end of the day “it’s one game, anything can happen and Olympiacos proved that” and his primary feeling is “i am happy we have a good team, we are going to keep growing as a team, as a collective group, we have a great road ahead of us”. That means he is staying in Russia? “Maybe! We will see”.
Alexey Shved was… hiding actually to a room across CSKA’s locker rooms, talking to Sport-express.ru, before we find him and hear him saying: “I really don’t know what happened. I mean, I cannot explain it. It’s unbelievable. We had almost 20 points lead and we gave it up. It was our game and we lost it. I cannot believe what we did. Olympiacos was great at the second half, but that doesn’t say anything. I repeat, it was our fault, our game… but we lost it”.