RUS – Blatt: ‘Russia will compete no matter which players show up’

TEL AVIV (EuroBasket 2011)  - David Blatt knows what it takes to win a gold medal at a EuroBasket.

He led Russia to the top of the podium four years ago in Spain and would love to do it again in Lithuania this summer.

But to have a realistic chance of doing that, Blatt, who watched the EuroBasket 2011 draw on Sunday and saw Russia fall into a Group D with Slovenia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Georgia and Ukraine, needs his best players to represent the country again, just as Spain need Pau Gasol and Greece need Dimitris Diamantidis.

"All of the teams are one team with one group of guys, and another team with another group of guys," Blatt said to FIBA.com.

"You saw Spain last year without Pau Gasol.

"With all due respect to Spain, they're one of the very, very best teams in Europe, but where are they in Europe without Gasol and (Jose) Calderon? Let's be honest, and they have a lot of players.”

Spain reached the Quarter-Finals at the 2010 FIBA World Championship but lost to Serbia on a long three-pointer by Milos Teodosic at the buzzer.

"The reality is that at this level, if you want to be a top team, then you want to have the top players,” Blatt said.

For this reason, Blatt can’t venture a guess as to where Russia will end up at the EuroBasket in Lithuania.

If he has one group of his players, Blatt’s team would be among the best on the continent.

With another, like the squad that overachieved at the FIBA World Championship in Turkey, Russia are among a group of teams that would do well just to reach the last Quarter-Finals.

“I was very proud of what we did at the World Championship. To finish seventh without all of our players was great.

"We won six games out of nine games.

"That's not an easy thing to do at a World Championship.

"We beat better teams. We beat teams we were supposed to beat. We lost to the U.S. in a very well played game, and we lost to Turkey by nine points in Turkey which is as good as anybody did (except Team USA in the Final) and we lost to Argentina, which is a high-level team that finished above us in the standings.”

First things first

Blatt has not signed a contract extension with Russia, something that seemed unlikely last year at the World Championship, but Russia’s federation and the new president, Alexander Krasnenkov, have made no secret of their desire to keep the 51-year-old in the job.

"Right now, the direction is very positive and I am in serious discussions with the new president," Blatt said.

"I'll shortly be going back to Russia to meet with him.

"Right now, all the indications are very positive that I'll continue."

Therefore, he watched the EuroBasket draw in Lithuania with a lot of interest.

Bulgaria’s coach, Rosen Barchovski, said he was happy to have avoided Spain, Turkey and tournament hosts Lithuania in Group A.

Only the top three sides will progress from each group to the next phase.

Blatt doesn’t think it wise to become too excited about a draw.

"You know," he said, "because I've been doing this for a while. I've been at a number of EuroBaskets, an Olympic Games and a World Championship, and I think that the gifts of the winter time can turn out to be the punishments of the summer time, and vice-versa - you just don't know.

"You can't know at this stage.

“It's a little premature to either celebrate or to lament your condition at this point and I think that all coaches would do very well to be calm at this point and just see how the teams shape up, who comes and who doesn't, before they start getting overly concerned one way or another."

Nevertheless, Blatt wasn’t unhappy that the basketball gods had placed his team in Group D.

"Our draw is even,” he said, “a lot of evenly balanced teams.

“But it's a group that I would hope we'd find a way to advance from and that's the important thing in the First Round.”

Avoiding Israel

Blatt is the coach of Maccabi Tel Aviv and calls Israel home.

Arik Shivek's Israeli team ended up in Group B, and Blatt was relieved.

"Honestly, I am," he said.

"I didn't want to go against them again. I did in EuroBasket, Spain, 2007. It was not a comfortable situation for me."

He then laughed and said: "It wasn't comfortable for them, either, because we won by 35.

"I was happy at the end of the day that they qualified out of that group, by the way. That made me feel better. It wasn't comfortable playing them, nor beating them by 35.

"But it was a happy moment for me when they qualified."

So what can Europe expect of Russia at the EuroBasket? Might this team go on another great run and reach the Final, which would qualify the team for the London Olympics?

"For me, the most important thing is to see which team I have because over the last three years, even though we have played well and had good results, we have not had our top players come, or they haven’t been available because of injury,” Blatt said.

"I'll be very interested to see over these next few months who we'll have at our disposal and then I'll be able to comment more specifically on the draw that we had and whether or not we can advance and in what condition."

The return of naturalized point guard Holden would be celebrated.

He hit the game-winning basket against Spain in 2007 and remains a leading point guard in Russia with CSKA Moscow.

While he hasn’t played since the 2008 Olympics, the Pennsylvania native hasn’t retired.

"I asked him every year but he politely refuses so I don't know that he'll change his mind," Blatt said.

"I'll certainly ask him as I always do. I'm waiting anxiously to see what is going to happen with the NBA lockout because that will directly influence some of our players.

" I would strongly hope that Andrei would come back and join us after a few years of not participating and that Timofey Mozgov would come back and play as he has done the last two years.

"We have a big concern with Viktor Khryapa, who unfortunately has not played this year (at CSKA Moscow) except for a few minutes due to a very difficult and chronic ankle condition that he has.

"He may not play again this year, so I don't know what kind of condition that puts him in this year with the national team.

"So we're still waiting to see who is going to come and play with us. We could be one team in one group, or we can be a team that is the fighting, overachieving and fun team of the last few years without Khryapa, without Holden and without Kirilenko and just do the best that we can.

"I will say this, which is what we've done the past few years without the stars, that we will be a competitor. We'll come and we'll play and we won't be an easy match for anyone."

Jeff Taylor
FIBA