Well, fans, the crowning of Eurocup champion is just a couple days away now, a couple days in which we can all expect some really exciting basketball in Vitoria, Spain, where we landed on Thursday. Of course, none of us on Alba is thinking beyond Saturday, because we have our work cut out for us against Bilbao in the semifinal. In order to get the trophy, you have to win on Saturday first. Semifinals day in a back-to-back tournament like this is always fun. There's a lot of hype and energy for that first game. Everyone is fresh and the adrenaline is pumping. It's going to be exciting for sure. Everybody asks what we'll have to do against Bilbao, but the truth is that a lot of players don't concentrate much on another team's situation. Personally, I like to focus on what we have together and what we do, rather than to compare and contrast ourselves with other teams. We're a team that has played together a couple years, and we want to put that glue and confidence to use on the court.

Our glue was looking a little unstuck earlier in the week, when there were a lot of unresolved injuries on our roster, but I am happy to report that we all made the trip. So even if there are a couple doubts about who is 100-percent, we are together and we know that whether on the court or from the bench, we can deliver a great team effort. The truth is, I think motivation is like medicine in these situations. In big games like this, it's all... more

Hi, Eurocup fans! My teammates and I on Alba Berlin can't wait to ring out the Eurocup season in Spain this weekend - and hopefully bring the trophy back here to Germany's capital with us! It's been a real long season for Alba. We were trying to make it into the Euroleague, so everyone came early to get ready for those qualifying games back in September. It didn't work out for us, but we wanted to forget that disappointment by turning around and seizing the opportunity to play in the Eurocup. I think we made the best of that opportunity so far, by making this weekend's Eurocup Finals. And when it's over, we hope to be going to the Euroleague anyway, as the champs of the Eurocup!

I didn't know at one point this season if I was going to make it this far myself. What happened to me shows that luck is also part of teams getting to the final phases in any competition. I am talking about injury luck: mine was bad, but it turned out not stopping me for the whole season, so it turned good. I was boxing out for a rebound in a game in January and got banged in the leg like rebounders always do. It seemed so normal at the time that I stayed in for a couple more possessions. I had gotten hit like that so many times before, I just thought I had a slight cramp or something. I went home after the game and noticed that the leg I got hit on started swelling. Then in the middle of the night it started hurting more and more. I couldn't sleep and called the doctor in the morning. As it turns out, the bang I took had broken some sort of blood vessel in my leg and it just kept bleeding and swelling. They had to operate on me and I missed several games in the Last 16 round of the Eurocup. It was such a strange way to get... more