By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
The Heraklion 2016 basketball tournament in the Greek island of Crete is the stage in which Amare Stoudemire got a first taste of top level European basketball and coach Simone Pianigianni is more than satisfied by his mentality.
And that kind of mentality can bring Hapoel Jerusalem to the goal of being a part of Euroleague. The Israelis are competing this season in Eurocup and Stoudemire is ready for the challenge, as his coach said: “The mentality of Amare is great. For him this is a different game. He will help us a lot and every day he will improve. He is the first to come in the gym and the last to leave. Even in the game against Efes, after playing catastrophic defense in the first half and with the opponents power forwards killing us, he took it as a challenge to face them in defense and try to stop them”.
It’s not a secret that Hapoel hopes to be part of the Euroleague and Pianigiani wants to build this kind for mentality in order for his team to be ready: “We want to be part of the Euroleague and I believe that Euroleague will soon include more teams. Eurocup is also really competitive this year with teams which played recently in Euroleague like Khimki, Unicaja, Valencia, Bayern Munich and more. Our fans, our owners, the new gym of Jerusalem, the significance of the city all point towards the Euroleague. Still we have to go step by step. We have to be competitive in Eurocup and build this mentality. If we do it, if we compete with teams which are on the level of this tournament, we will be ready”.