To win is not enough: My life, my basketball by Sarunas Jasikevicius & Pietro Scibetta

Author:Sarunas Jasikevicius & Pietro Scibetta
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9788867831098
Publisher: ADD Editore
Published: 2015-10-29T05:00:00+00:00

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The days after the “miracle” against Zalgiris were among the most incredible I remember. We had a narrow escape, a feeling even stronger than that experienced a year before when we saved ourselves from the Olympiacos trap against Barcelona.

Once again, in short, my team risked missing the Final Four at home, but this time it found a way – a definitely creative way – to prevent this disaster. We were still dazed from Sharp’s shot, to the point that we did not even speak of what happened after, in overtime, and how we had won the game. In a sense, Derrick had stopped time and I was impressed with the seriousness with which Gur Shelef stated, “This is the Holy Land, miracles happen every day here.” He was not joking; he was serious...

In a way, though, one could believe that we were some kind of “predestined team”: today everybody talks about that Maccabi as a team that dominated, but the truth is that during my first season in Israel, we won several matches with the very last shot, thanks to some lucky circumstances. We were not fully aware of our strength and probably that was normal.

Meanwhile, the pairings for the Final Four were set: as it happened in Barcelona, I would face CSKA in the semifinals. The other pairing was an all-Italian derby, Skipper Bologna vs. Montepaschi Siena. We faced all of them during regular season. We had the lost at home against Moscow and Bologna, and we almost lost against Siena. I did not like at all the defeat against the Russians, because I considered it a wake-up call. They were big and strong as ever with tall players like as Victor Alexander, Dragan Tarlac and Mirsad Turkcan and plenty of dangerous players, like Theo Papaloukas, Marcus Brown, J.R. Holden, who for me was a real nightmare. Because of his unpredictability in attack, but also because he was very fast and could apply full-court press nonstop. On the bench, Dusan Ivkovic was synonymous with organization and hardness: they knew how to control the pace and keep us from playing offensively, even using tactical fouls.

It could not have been a showtime-kind of game, and I was trying to convey my idea that the only way to beat CSKA would be by accepting that kind of challenge. They knew our weaknesses. We thought that whoever won that game would win the title. Skipper and Montepaschi were spectacular and talented teams, but against them, we felt we were able to play our way and therefore win more easily.

Getting closer to the big event meant having two problems: being able to sleep despite the tension, and maintaining the workout routine during the week of the games. In theory, I could not access the Yad Eliyahu, which in that particular circumstance was “neutral ground”, but thanks to the staff of the building, I managed to train alone, as always, without drawing too much attention. Working alone, for all those months, I improved as a player and as a professional, because I was able to give myself rules and respect them.

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