Milan –
These are the words of Sergio Scariolo: “Congratulations to Olimpia. As in all the games of the series tonight the home team had more energy than the other and in the end they won, so the court factor in the end was decisive. I have to say that I am very very proud of the effort made by my players, not only in this game where obviously, especially in the veterans, we really had very little gas left, but throughout the season they have shown tremendous cohesion, competitive pride, compactness and an ability to overcome very difficult moments, especially when we had many injured players. We played an unbelievable playoff game, I feel like everybody gave 100 percent of themselves, obviously you can be bitter about losing, but you can’t be disappointed or angry. I want to thank everyone, each of the staff members, technical, physical, the society for making a great effort to really come to fight until the last without giving up even today in a game where the initial 12 points was the final gap. As said congratulations to Olimpia but I am very proud of our team’s effort.
Regrets? I have absolutely no regrets from the point of view of the team’s performance, of what we did: we played great basketball, great level, not trailing the trends of pick’n’roll and three-point shots, we diversified our attacks, attacking inside the area and outside with great variety. When we found health we were also able to become a very good defensive team as we demonstrated today by holding Milan to 67 points. From a game and basketball standpoint I am very happy and cannot say a single word of regret. Today a lot of open shots that we built didn’t go in and we were never able to get unblocked with a swipe of 2-3 shots in a row that you build with a couple of feet on the defender, they don’t go in. The last minute of the regular season game, but the season is over and it pays to think about the things that were not done well in three finals. We made it to three finals, nobody made it, we struggled the first year in the Euroleague strenuously despite having crucial players out for 3/4 of the season-I can’t talk about regrets at all. We never made a basket despite the flood of open shots taken: as much as you can defend in a zone, with the small guys with the long guys, they gave some performance, but on offense we never made a basket and especially we missed a lot of open shots early on putting a heavy backpack of confidence drop on you that we were never able to get off our shoulders. We had isolated moments, but we were unable to turn the shooting opportunities we created for ourselves into baskets.
I cannot call it a regret that we did not have a reinforcement under the basket. The need was obvious we all knew it, if the opportunity is there you do it otherwise let’s not beat around the bush. We are proud that we made it to game 7, fighting until the end, being one of the few European teams not to have reinforced: at this point it remains not a regret but a reason for pride. We started with certain strengths and we arrived at the end playing a week’s game, of a beautiful final, losing because the others played a thread better than us the 7th game because of the stimulus of playing in front of their fans.
Having drawn games with Milan is a great pride for us: we know the size of our opponents, but we have not resigned ourselves to this size. The difference is the reality of things, we struggled, doing at the level of effort and attempt everything that was in our hands, but we made fewer baskets than we would have liked to get to win this last game, but I think it is a source of pride.
They are a great team, built to be and they did a great operation with the graft of Napier who is a great player that really gave them an international dimension, of leadership class, of playmaking: we are talking about a great team with a great coach, with great players so it was a great pride to be able to have made it to the last looking them in the eye.”
