In Perm, the Russian basketball team won a landslide victory over their main rival in the European Championship qualifying group. Wards of David Blatt defeated the Czech team - 104: 81.
“I would not like you to have the impression that the game was easy,” David Blatt said at the post-match press conference, “we were able to make it like that.”
Both Russia and the Czech Republic are eager for the European Championship. And they want it right away, that is, from the first place in the group. The fact that these teams will claim the first place, it became clear from the very beginning. After the Russian team did not understand how they lost to the Belgians (Sergey Monya dryly commented on this loss: “They played ... in general, like a school team ...”), and the Czech team won in their games, the intrigue in the subgroup started to spin. A face-to-face meeting of Russians and Czechs in Perm could put an end to the Russian European dream. However, in the Perm Palace "Hammer", the Russian team held the best match in their short history so far. In the first half of the meeting, the general impression was that there were no such fortresses that this team could not take. Victor Khryapa very organically fit into the role of the national team leader and dragged her - not one, of course - forward.
After a long break, ours relaxed slightly. Through the efforts of their leaders, Barton and Benes, the Czechs were able to substantially narrow the 30-point gap that became indecent. At the same post-match meeting with reporters, Blatt will succinctly say that missing 56 points in one half is a very bad job. Blatt, probably, can call what was happening on the Perm floor, work. All the rest, and especially seven thousand Perm fans, left a feeling of a real holiday. On September 13, in the same place, in Perm, the Russian team will play with the Belgians. Everything will be finally decided on September 16: the Czech Republic will host our team, and after this meeting someone will go to book tickets to Spain.
Valery WINGURT