Smodis ate porridge

“Now that I entered the locker room, I told the guys to think about the phrase“ win the Cup ”,“ win the gold medal, ”an experienced Lithuanian expert shared philological research in Russian. - You can win the lottery, but you need to fight for such trophies, to prove yourself to be men. This was done by the basketball players of CSKA, and therefore became the winners. ”

Sireika had to explain much longer than his colleague Ettore Messina, who limited himself to the standard commentary and explained why it was so important to play aggressively against Kazan (to limit the ball) and more often give passes under the shield, not limited to “twos” (because the opponent is very difficult ) But the UNICS coach “fought” for the whole team. How not to lose CSKA on the selection? - “You need to eat more porridge!” The hit of his speech was a clear explanation of the success of Matyaz Smodis, who reigned in the three-second zone. “If I had players with legs like Smodis’s,” Sireika said dreamily and presented a pot-bellied bag of juice with a Slovenian, and a skinny bottle of mineral water as an arbitrary representative of his team. Then he began to show how easily, as if not noticing the obstacles, the package moves the bottle. More precisely, Smodis - Kazan.

The most useful in the “Final Four” was recognized by the excellent player Alexei Savrasenko. Although, in truth, it was Smodis who did the rest of the damage to the defense, and to the morale of the UNICS players. Egor Meshcheryakov, in an interview with Sport Today, complained about the ambiguity of several judgments: indeed, a couple of block shots received by Matyazhe from the “big” Kazan were unjustifiably called fouls, the Lavrinovichi brothers loaded up with personal remarks too early - they played completely not rudely, and Smodis had his hands untied. A language was unleashed along with them, which, alas, has recently behaved too independently in the Slovenian. On Monday, Matyazh almost got into a fight with Dynamo Fotsis, and on Tuesday with both Lavrinovichi and Meshcheryakov. In the Euroleague, the heavy forward of CSKA does not allow such a thing ...

For four to five minutes, UNICS stayed very well. The rather effective defense of Kazanians, noticeably progressing during the season, was striking. But then their own defense, so praised by rivals, turned on CSKA. Given the successful appearance on the site of Papaloukas and Andersen, this was enough to go into the double-digit distance.

The team game of the guests (so-called aliens from Kazan, nevertheless, is logical), who shocked the fans with a large number of assists, disappeared somewhere. UNICS basketball players often began to stumble on an individual game, inaccurate and simply stupid actions. For the time being, the “zone”, unloved by the army team, helped maintain the intrigue, but even it did not allow reducing the gap more than to “-10”.

The army soldiers, who “proved smarter and more cunning than their rivals in the grueling conditions of two matches in 48 hours” (Messina's words), had to open the champagne and start celebrating the first trophy this season. We bought plenty of fizzy drinks: excited Papaloukas and Smodis generously spent two bottles on Sergei Kushchenko who thoughtlessly appeared on the court, sending the chef of a large CSKA to the locker room in a suit soaked through and through. It seemed that everyone had a mustache, but didn’t get into his mouth.

And UNICS urgently needs to consult a nutritionist. The playoffs of the Russian championship will start very soon.

Nikolai TSYNKEVICH, Prominent