By Niki Bakouli/ bakouli@eurohoops.net
He was sitting at a corner of the locker rooms –actually, behind the main door-, all sweaty, trying to relax a little bit, to catch his breath, to feel everything there is to feel when you know you have done your job. Or actually… 50% of it. We approached Jonas Kazlauskas and tried to feel like what it is to be in his shoes.
“Listen, nobody tells you, when you are coming to a big club like CSKA Moscow, you are going to live an easy life. You have to work hard in order to win titles. You cannot do something else when you are in CSKA Moscow. There is also big pressure. But really, tell me where I didn’t have pressure? At China? At Olympiacos? At the national team of Greece? This is our life and we have to know how to control our emotions, every little detail. That’s why I am a little disappointed with how we started the game”, when the Russians bent of the pressure they felt, after everybody expected from them, from… the beginning of the season, to take the trophy.
“Panathinaikos had the bid advantage, cause they are for a long time together, they have the same coach, the same experienced and talented players and they know all about Final Fours or how to have concentration from the beginning till the end. Nobody remembers we are a new team. From last year, we have only Khryapa and “Siska” and Shved was… a junior, a bench player. We were too nervous, we made bad decisions, stupid mistakes, we played no defense and we reached -14, before we tried to change everything, starting from our defense. When we reached -2, we knew we were back at the game”. Will the final be an other story? “We are about to see it. I am happy of how we finished the game and with how we fought like a team to get our job done”.
If there is a player who felt the bigger pressure, this is Andrei Kirilenko, as Kazlauskas says: “I tried to take off a little, with some talks I had with him. More or less, I told him “listen Andrei you are a very big star, but Ι don’t thing that after Jordan retired from basketball, there was ever again a player who beat a team by himself”. Andrei’s answer was always “yes, coach I know, I know” and at the semifinal we were lucky to have him and he found his rhythm at the second half”.
Little later, Ramunas Siskauskas admitted: “the truth is we didn’t play like we said, from the beginning. We were terrible and we didn’t do anything right. After we reached -14, it was about time to change everything immediately, cause we knew against a great team like Panathinaikos, we wouldn’t have any chance if we didn’t react in the second period. We played tough and physical defense and that was the key to our success. We didn’t give… just the 100% of ourselves. We reached 150% of our maximum”. And at the last minutes, this time luck favored CSKA. “Nobody expects an easy game when two great teams like CSKA and Panathinaikos play a semifinal game. We gave everything. We didn’t save anything for the final and play by play we came back and won a great game, by supporting each other and play like a team. Now we just want to play a really good game, from the first second till the end, to take the trophy. For sure, we want to do a much better job. We wish the best to Panathinaikos a team which at last decade is one of the top teams and it will be sad if they disappear from the basketball map due to financial reasons. I hope they will keep the main players and the coaches and they will stay at the same level”.