By John Rammas / irammas@eurohoops.net
Mike James tapped 18 points for CSKA in their Round 28 victory against Panathinaikos, and following the game he spoke to Eurohoops about the upcoming playoffs, getting less credit than he deserves and more.
Many teams below the fifth position are fighting for the playoffs and James supports the growth of the league, as he tells Eurohoops.
“It’s this way since they changed the format, since then everybody’s been really close with everybody and fights for the playoffs. It was the same thing last year, like six teams were trying to get into the playoffs and it just changed in the last day. It’s gonna be like that I think. The bigger the EuroLeague is the more money the teams have and the more the league keeps growing things are gonna continue this way”.
Ettore Messina recently commented that 4-5 playoff spots are “locked” and the rest of the teams are going to fight for the remaining spots and that in the NBA there are 30 teams for 16 spots, which shows how difficult the competition is. “I’m not really worried about it. If you win enough games, you play in the playoffs”, tells James.
James also spoke about receiving criticism from media and how he deals with it. “When you’re vocal about things and you’re good and people consider you good, every little thing you do bad is just magnified. This position you wanna be in, you wanna be scrutinized cause that makes people respect you. Do I feel I’m given enough credit all the time? No. Does it really matter? No. At the end of the day, if my team wins that’s all that matters”