Βy Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
It’s not explainable. Not even the players of Maccabi can explain what happened in the final against Real Madrid. As the MVP of the Final Four, Tyrece Rice said: “Ι can’t explain this. To be honest, I don’t even know what just happened. I don’t think I can put it into words”.
He said all these watching again and again the yellow nation that invaded into Mediolanum Forum and gave credit to the fans: “This is Maccabi Tel Aviv. This is how this club is, you see how these fans come to support, they came here to see us win and see us compete. And I am so happy we made that possible for them. They are the best fans in European basketball, you know if you going to play against Maccabi Tel Aviv, the fans are going to come. We are 3,000 miles away, and there is 20,000 people in this city”.
On behalf of his game he said: “It was the best and most important game of my life, but this is the team effort. This has nothing to do what I was doing individually, because nothing is possible without my teammates. These trophies are for everybody. We played Real Madrid, the best team in Europe. Now we are the best in Europe”.
Big Sofo repeated that “I want to stay forever in Maccabi” and said about the final: “Determination allowed us to win this game, the will to win; this is what this team has. Everybody here thought that Maccabi came here as an underdog. I said it every time they asked me and I will say it again: there are no underdogs in the Final Four”.
Blatt: “Wow”
David Blatt began his quotes reffering Steve Jobs: “One of the greatest quotes I ever read in my life was in the last moments of Steven Jobs’ life. He was a great man. The last word he said was ‘Wow’. Think about how wonderful that is, how positive that is, how optimistic that is. A man with his dying breath says ‘wow’. That means he saw something going forward that gave us all some hope”.
As for the big win he mentioned: “This is a great, great day for our players, for our club, for our fans and I think for basketball in general. What you saw was a team that definitely wasn’t the most talented on an individual level. I don’t say that we don’t have any talent. We have talent, but it wasn’t the most talented as a group of individuals. But as a team we were the best team”.
Finally he was asked about Real and the title of underdog: “I wonder if Real was happy when we beat CSKA. I wonder, I didn’t ask. But on paper we were the weaker team. They looked like world beaters on Friday. That had a negative effect on them tonight. They thought it would be easier than it was“.