Inputs from the ACB League's Final |
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The week horribilis of FC Barcelona, with this unexpected defeat in the playoff Final, doesn’t change the opinion I have expressed a few times during the season: it is a team very cleverly planned and built in the summer that played throughout the season the best basketball in Europe showing, and probably thank to it, a great cohesion of the players on the court, whose credit goes to the coach, to the technical staff and of course to the players themselves. That said, I think that for sport in general and basketball in particular, it is not entirely a bad thing that the best team on paper didn’t win the championship.  Baskonia Caja Laboral is an excellent example of professional management, which has kept the club at the top for years with great fundraising efforts and an excellent decisions on the team front, thanks to the work of its executives in the office and its coaches and players on the court, among whom of course a special note goes to Dusko Ivanovic leading from the bench Caja Laboral ‘s great successes. It is a message for the sport world: there is always a margin of unpredictability and a chance for the underdog team, even in a clear-cut as it was this year, to win even in such an evident manner as this 3-0 was. Specifically, the fact that the last point was scored by a player who last summer was practically excluded from the roster and invited to find another club, is an important message to all players, some of whom sometimes exaggerate the need and the importance of feeling the trust coming from the outside. Fernando San Emeterio felt that he had to find trust within himself, interpreted the decision to exclude him as a challenge (as it should be for any sportsman and any professional), and responded as a great player and a great professional should: on the court, week after week, workout after workout, game after game, and it was nice to see he received, even though probably in the worst game he played throughout the playoffs, the prize of the last shot and the additional free-throw that awarded the title to his team. |
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