Hello again, Euroleague fans! Well, we are almost at the end of the rainbow, here in Kaunas, ready to play the EuroBasket final today! As you know already, we are facing France in the title game. We are very happy not only because we have the chance to win the tournament, but also because we managed to achieve our initial goal: making it to the 2012 Olympic Games in London! We can't wait for the game to start, even though we know it is going to be very difficult, and very different from when we played France in the second group stage in Vilnius. We know what we have to do to beat them, which would mean our second consecutive EuroBasket gold medal!

A lot of people expected our semifinal game against FYR of Macedonia to be an easy win, but we knew it was not going to be that way. Macedonia is a strong team that never, ever gives up. That's why they stayed in each and every game, winning most of them. Nobody gets to a EuroBasket semifinal by accident, but only by playing good basketball, like they did. You may be lucky to get past the first group stage, but once a team manages to beat others like Greece, Croatia and Lithuania, all you can do is recognise how well Macedonia competed over the last few weeks. Luckily for us, Juan Carlos Navarro was unstoppable in the third... more

Hello again from me, Sergio Llull, here in Lithuania with the Spanish national team. We have landed in our third city here, Kaunas, ready to compete in the big games for the medals and a place in the Olympic Games! As I get in touch with you, Euroleague fans, we are coming off a victory over France to finish first in our group. We really wanted to win that game not only to finish first, but also to get an extra day between the quarterfinals and the semifinals. We have played many games so far and that extra day is very valuable – should we win the quarterfinal game with Slovenia, that is. With that thought in mind, we had a strong start against France and played very well after the break to get a very comfortable win and finish first, just as we wanted to. France sat out two of its best players, Tony Parker and Joakim Noah, but we didn't think much about it. As a team, we are only focused on ourselves and how to win games. We played really well and all of our players helped us to get this important win.

We have had several good games throughout the tournament, especially against Lithuania, Serbia and France, three other quarterfinalists. That has helped to boost our confidence and makes us want to win more and more games, especially since each and every one will be do-or-die from now on. I think that we played really well against Serbia, a very tough opponent that we managed to beat by 25 points. We needed to beat them to mathematically make it to the quarterfinals and were focused, inspired and ready. Again, they are a good team and the fact that they are fourth in our group shows how difficult EuroBasket 2011 has been for us... more

Hello, Euroleague fans! I'm Sergio Llull of Real Madrid, here in Panevezys, Lithuania with the Spanish national team at EuroBasket 2011. The competition is going well for us so far. With three wins in as many games, we cannot ask for much more. We can see that the team is improving steadily, game after game. We were a bit nervous in the first game against Poland and did not play well. Poland put us into trouble but we managed to get that all-important first win. We improved a bit against Portugal in the second game: even when they rallied a bit once, the outcome was clear. And the we were able to beat a good team like Great Britain, which made us happy because it sealed our ticket to the next round. We have a day off now, which we want to most of by getting ready for our next games, against Lithuania and Turkey. I am sure that those games will be a big challenge.

We were surprised at the way Poland played against us. We wanted to win and play well, of course, but they played very well and made a lot of baskets with a few seconds on the shot clock. They grabbed important rebounds in the fourth quarter and managed to get back into the game. The bottom line is that we were able to get the win once things got complicated. We did a good job in the end and that is what matters. The game against Portugal was very different, in that sense. We were in control all the time that day. On our team, every player tries to contribute as much as he can to get... more