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Oh baby, it's Berlin or bust!

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:33:28 GMT

A couple of days ago I was reading my friend Marco Mordente's Euroleague goodbye blog, in which he was thanking everybody for the opportunity to blog here and at the same time did some predictions for the upcoming Quarterfinal Playoffs. Reading all that, it occurred to me that I am not ready yet to see my Euroleague season end. So I consider myself quite a happy person to still be part of the field, and on my way to an attractive series, because I am absolutely sure that is what our matchup with Olympiacos will be.

At the same time though, having taken part in all but one Final Four since 2004, I am also a little spoiled. I would, of course, love to get there again, but that goes for everybody, as I realized while speaking to Theo Papaloukas, one of my closest friends in basketball, earlier this week. Waging a small psychological war, he already told me that, in his view, we did not have a chance to beat Olympiacos the way they are playing right now. So I told him that we almost threw a party about playing them and not somebody else (I was joking, just to make sure that nobody gets this wrong) because out of all seven teams they were our favorite matchup.

After an exhausting month of February, with lots of big games, a week with no games gave us an opportunity to have a perfect mix of hard practice, fine-tuning tactics and lots of rest. It even feels a little bit like preseason, trying to get ready for the bigger work ahead. Playing six games in the next two weeks will not leave much time for any of those things - practice, fine-tuning or rest. We will play against Eurocup quarterfinalist Pamesa Valencia on Sunday in the Spanish League, and I guess this could be a perfect general rehearsal for the Olympiacos series. After spending next week in Athens against the Reds, in between Game 2 and Game 3 we will also have to fly all the way to Gran Canaria, the longest road trip in the Spanish League, to play a difficult away game against the sixth-place team in the standings. All this means that we will have to come ready, physically and mentally, to make it to Berlin.

Talking about making it to Berlin, however, the fact that scares me the most is that my wife Julie is due with our firstborn, a daughter, in early May! We keep joking about it all the time, how Murphy's law will make sure that both events will happen at the same time, and how it would be such an unfair choice. But we are still three wins away from that…and I will keep you all posted!

To Tel Aviv, with first place in mind

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:46:15 GMT

It is that time of the Euroleague season again, the time when everybody starts calculating, players, fans and officials. Halfway through the Top 16 - and with three wins and no losses - calculating is the last thing we at Real Madrid want to start doing. Our goal should be to try to finish first in our group at all cost. If we make it to the playoffs, we would be crossing with the group that has powerhouses Tau Vitoria, Olympiacos and outsider Olimpia Milan - the last team to beat us in the Euroleague this season - so we can surely use our homecourt advantage at Palacio Vistalegre, in front of our fans, who have helped us more than ever over the last few games.

We are reminded of how important fans are at this stage since we are headed to Maccabi's Nokia Arena this week. Along with Pionir in Belgrade, it's probably the hardest court in the Euroleague. We will have to be more than ready and fully prepared, mentally, to get a positive result. For me, personally, this gym always brings back awful memories of the Euroleague final that my Fortitudo Bologna teammates and I lost there back in 2004. Well, it was more than just losing. I think Maccabi that night gave one of the most impressive team performances anyone has ever seen in recent Euroleague history. Too bad I had to be on the other end of it. I am convinced that, after we beat Maccabi by 19 points two weeks ago, Coach Gershon and his guys will be more than ready to give us a "warm welcome" this week. I just checked the stats and only our fellow Spanish team, Unicaja Malaga, was able to win in Tel Aviv during this Euroleague season, so we will need an outstanding performance from everybody if we want to do the same on Thursday.

In a couple of months, I am turning 31, and I don't have a problem with that. Not at all, in fact, because I feel that the experience I have gained over the years is helping me a lot now. Nobody is ever too old to learn, about basketball or anything else. I am convinced that even at more than 30 years old I can still get better on a daily basis, and add some things to my game that can help in the upcoming seasons. I want to keep playing as long as I have fun and feel the desire to win. Because of my age, though, I now often get the question how long I think I will keep playing at the highest level. And I think I found the perfect answer to that now: I wish to keep playing until David Vanterpool, now an assistant under Coach Messina at CSKA, takes over a head coach position somewhere and signs me as his starting center. He was one of my all-time favorite teammates, a great player, and will be a great coach for sure. I can't wait for him to give me call in 2013 or so, telling me that he wants to sign me!

Like coming home again!

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:38:42 GMT

Hello everybody, this is Real Madrid center Tomas Van den Spiegel. First of all, I want to thank the Euroleague for giving me the chance to blog again on its website, like I did last season when I was in Prokom. It is good to be back in the Euroleague. I won the Euroleague title with CSKA last year but started this season in the Eurocup, playing for Azovmash Mariupol. I had the chance to come to Madrid and play the Euroleague again, adn even though the Eurocup is a good competition, I am used to playing the Euroleague. It was a bit weird to play against a lot of new guys in the Eurocup earlier this season. Last season, after so many years in the Euroleague, there were games in which I knew everybody on both teams! In the Eurocup, sometimes I didn't have anyone to say hello to on the opposing team. So it is good to be back and to see all the guys again, the people I am used to playing against.

We played against Regal FC Barcelona last week and the atmosphere in the packed gym in Madrid was incredible. It was my first classic, too, just a few weeks after arriving in Madrid. I had been trying to come to Spain for a while already and if you have to pick a city, Madrid is not a bad one at all. It is still a little chilly now, I can't wait for the weather to be better, but the quality of life is better and I love being here. The organization is great and life in Ukraine was not easy sometimes, just sometimes. Being in such a big city like Madrid is a great experience. I am suprised how everybody gets along on this team. Everybody cares about everything, and you can feel it right away if a team cares about what is happening or not. Here in Real Madrid, everybody really cares about everything, from small to big details, anytime. It is easy to work with a group of people like Real Madrid has.

Now there are two Belgian players on Real Madrid, me and Axel Hervelle. It was kind of weird at the start, when I got here, because everybody talked about it and how lucky we were. People thought we knew each other very well but in fact, I left Belgium at the moment that Axel started to play in the first division. We only played in the national team for one summer! It was not like we knew each other but now that we have met and have been on the same team for a couple of weeks, we get along very well. We like to play together and it is working out really well. It is good to have a player from your same country on your team. There is a tradition of Belgian players in Real Madrid, as Eric Struelens and Jean-Marc Jaumin were also here in the past. I don't think there is another non-Belgian team in Europe that ever had four Belgian players on its roster! That is a lot, because I don't think we produce good Belgian players every two weeks!

Back to the classic, everybody was talking about the game and it is diffiuclt to describe it. Sometimes you try to focus on your own game but you can immediately feel that this game was different that any other one I played at Palacio Vistalegre so far. Everybody was pushing us to beat Barcelona and wanted it so bad. I have played other difficult games in other complicated arenas but I am sure that every time that Barcelona comes to Madrid, it is something that they are looking forward to. They have to overcome this strong atmosphere, the crowd was really pushing us and really helped us to beat them last week.

We play Alba...