By Lefteris Moutis
“Parthenogenesis” doesn’t exist. Neither in art, nor in sports or in politics …Cause if you have an example of an ideal experiment (that fits 100% to your situation) there is no reason to waste time, right?
After the first game against Panathinaikos, David Blatt was trying to figure out how to restore his players confidence after everything… they didn’t do on the court. And he thought of what Simone Pianitziani did last year, after the devastation of Montepaschi Siena by Olympiacos (the Reds won by 48 points difference): first, he banned all players from talking before the second game. Second, he canceled his team’s practice at SEF (and eventually they had their work out at a gym in Egaleo, far from Piraeus). Third, he reminded his players that nothing was over. That they lost a game, not… the war (the qualification to the Final Four)
So, Tuesday, late at night, Blatt locked his players to the locker room for about 20 minutes. He used all this time to explain how bad they were, but at the same time to convince them they are able to honor Maccabi’s name, to play a really good game on Thursday. He sent one player to talk to the media and he said “thanks, but no thanks” to OAKA, for Wednesday’s training session. He chose to have his team practice at Ilisia near their hotel, where they also practiced on Sunday.
Last year, Pianigiani managed to lead Montepaschi Siena to Barcelona’s Final Four through his methods. Will David Blatt be able to reach the end of the road too? Or it will be proved one more time that Karl Marx was right when he said that “history repeats itself as farce or as tragedy.”?