“We would be making a mistake if we didn’t do anything else. What doesn’t get better gets worse”
BADALONA, 19 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Unicaja coach, Ibon Navarro, was “very happy and proud” of his players after winning the Copa del Rey, this Sunday at the Badalona Olímpic, against Lenovo Tenerife in a match that was the “most difficult” for the Basque coach despite having to beat Barça and Real Madrid to reach this unprecedented final.
“I am very happy for the boys, very proud of them, and I love them very much because what they have done in the last two weeks to arrive here as we have arrived has been very important. The union, the cohesion and the meaning of what it is a family is very similar to what is in this team,” he said at a press conference.
For Navarro, this was the “most difficult” game of the Cup. “Not because it was the final, but because Tenerife is the team that made our game the most difficult. Until the end of the last quarter, when it may be that we arrived fresher than them, we were able to speed up the pace of the game”, he pointed out.
“We know that the game against Tenerife was going to be more difficult than those against Barça and Madrid, because of how Tenerife plays. It’s worse for us because it’s a very sober type of game, without mistakes, very slow. We often live from mistakes of the rival and they do not commit it. This party was different and was the most complicated”, added in this sense.
And it is that he highlighted the “soul” with which both teams played a very even final until Unicaja took off in the last quarter. “There are two games that are very similar. Today both teams put the same soul and passion and ambition as us and it was decided by small details, especially concentrated in the last quarter,” he said.
On a personal level, he acknowledged that after being fired from Andorra he did not expect to win a Cup so soon, with Unicaja. “When a little over a year and 20 days ago I suffered my first dismissal, it was quite difficult to think that I could be here today. Life teaches you that it takes several turns in a short time. The important thing is not this but other things like health, family and friends who make you enjoy this”, he valued.
And in Malaga he ran into a new group, with up to nine signings, who have gotten along very well. “If there is something that prevails in this group, it is the lack of selfishness. We all put the team before individual interests. Some may think that it is my merit, but it is not. It is a merit of finding these people and that they have fit in, that they have Made everything fit with a lot of work. And that people fit so well is part of chance, because you can’t control it,” he was honest.
Of course, he does not want to stop in this Copa del Rey and will seek to improve the group. “We would make a mistake if we didn’t do anything else. What doesn’t improve gets worse. If we stay here they will pass us to the right and to the left. The level of the ACB is maximum and if you don’t improve, you get worse. This was born last year as the season ends, with moments of doubt. But the team is made with maximum enthusiasm, and it is not normal to sign so many players and for things to fit as they have fit, “he said.