By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Italy emerged to take down Olympic Qualifying Tournament hosts Serbia in a heartbreaking game for the latter, that seemed to be out of place for the entire game.
Serbia NT veteran Nemanja Bjelica took full responsibility for the loss in the post-game press conference and focused on what needs to be done from the players’ part in order to remain an example for the people of their nation and stay on the worldwide basketball map in the next years.
“If I don’t say this is a big shame the way we have lost the game, I will lie to you. I wasn’t ready to play today. What is the reason? I don’t think that’s important. We played like shit. With this attitude, we cannot play basketball. Playing for the national team is different. If you’re not here 100% you can’t win. I can apologize to our people, to our fans that came tonight, but what can we do with that? Our attitude has to change”, said Bjelica.
“Something has to change because, in 5 years, we are going to be gone. Talent, individual plays cannot win this type of tournaments. The better team won. We will have a longer summer to be ready for our seasons. I will take responsibility as a player with the most experience here. If we have Milos Teodosic playing full-court press for 40 minutes, something is wrong with us. What is the problem I don’t know. I hope we will fix that because we want to exist in five years”
“We need to have players that will be 100% ready. This is a big shame. This is not about our coaching staff, it’s the players. We need to be an example to our people [in Serbia], but we didn’t look like a team tonight. Maybe it’s better that we lost the game because we will learn something. This is not a joke. Playing for the NT is not a joke”.
Photo: FIBA