No doubts now: every basket is important
Hello again, everyone! I hope this is not my last blog for all of you, because we are getting to the sixth and final game of the Last 16 and still our group results are unknown. It was a tough loss for us at home against Valencia last week: they really took us away from our game. All the credit goes to them and to their coach. They are a great team. In fact, I think they describe the word TEAM better than any team we have encountered so far. I wish them all the best and I would not be surprised if they win the Eurocup trophy.
Destiny is still in our hands if we beat Galatasaray Cafe Crown in Istanbul on Tuesday. It is really hard to understand why Gala has lost all of their games. They are a great offensive team. They barely lost to Valencia in overtime in Spain and they lost only by 3 points to Unics in Kazan. We need to do the impossible and beat them on their home court. We will not wait for Valencia to do us the favor and beat Unics because we know that Unics is a great team and they can beat anyone, anywhere. If we are able to beat Gala and Unics beats Valencia, it will prove the point that I wrote to you a few weeks ago: the greatness and the competitiveness of the Eurocup. Maybe our qualification will hinge on the fact that we beat Unics by 9 points in Jerusalem and lost to them only by 7 in Kazan, or because we managed to make a final basket against Valencia at home and lose by just 6. Whatever happens, the motto our coaches were telling to us from the beginning of the campaign - "Every basket is important" - is absolutely true.
The heads of everybody in our club are crazy from making qualification calculations and thinking, "If we qualify, against whom we will qualify? Will we go back to play Aris or will it be Badalona or Berlin? When and where?" One thing's for certain, it will be a crazy Tuesday. The odds for us winning in Turkey are not great, however. Even though Gala has no chance of qualification, they score and they score a lot. And they will do their best to beat us at home, especially after we managed to beat them - who knows how? - by 15 in Jerusalem.
I felt bad this week because our fans deserved the win against Valencia, they were up for it and they pushed us all 40 minutes. We managed to get back into the game, but Valencia remained cool and calm and they deserved the win. Now, there are sleepless nights for so many teams around Europe with the wait for Game 6. The end is near, one game to reach the Quarterfinals, which are the games that lead to the Eurocup Finals. Everybody around can feel that a wonderful basketball season is reaching its dramatic conclusion. I really hope we can go all the way to the Finals, which would be a giant leap for Hapoel Jerusalem. Six years after we won the cup in Belgium, it will be a great honor for all of us to go to the Quarterfinals. To go beyond that would be a dream.
For that we need to survive Super Tuesday by getting that elusive qualification spot for the Quarterfinals. It looks like a small step but we all know, the club and especially the players, that it will be a giant leap.
Hope to be writing to you again soon!
POSTED BY
Yuval Naimy, Jerusalem