By Aris Barkas / barkas@eurohoops.net
PARIS, France – When he was appointed as the German national team’s head coach, Gordon Herbert wanted to take the best out of a three-year project.
Bronze medal at EuroBasket 2022, gold medal at the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023, and now Semi-Finals of the Olympic Games. If that doesn’t sound like taking the best out of it, well…
Only one game away from an Olympic Final, Germany’s head coach was asked if the medal in Paris was in this team’s destiny. “I hope so, it’s just one game at a time and that’s what we’re being focused on. And we’ll just play in two days, one game at a time, and see where that goes”, he replied in the mixed zone.
Then, he gave his flowers to the Greek national team. “Coach [Vassilis] Spanoulis has done a great job with them. They had a great tournament and lost a couple of close games. And this game was a lot closer than the score. We pulled away a little bit in the last five minutes. We’ll give them, give the coach and their team a lot of credit”, he congratulated Kill Bill and his players.
The two countries squared up against each other in the 2022 EuroBasket Quarter-Finals too. Gordon Herbert was then asked if he saw improvements from Greece’s national team in this two-year span. “Tough to say. I mean, coach [Vassilis] Spanoulis has done a great job with them. Defensively, I think they’re very, very strong”, he said.
“I don’t want to compare it to two years ago, but defensively they’re very, very strong and physical. And obviously they have Superman”, he also commented about Giannis Antetokounmpo, who finished his first Olympics with a 22-point losing effort.
“We expected a very good game. They were in the Group of Death and they had three really close games and played hard. We expected this type of game. [Greece is a] very good basketball team. [When] you get to the Quarter-Finals, any team can beat any team”, Gordon Herbert finished.
PHOTO CREDIT: FIBA Basketball