Unicaja has been working for more than 15 days. Most of the ACB teams are starting their preseason these days and some are still on vacation. There are many squads that are not yet complete and their coaches do not know who they are going to have for next season. Unicaja’s demanding start to the season, with 29 days remaining for its official premiere in the BCL preview, has precipitated everything. The squad does not work fully, but there is a solid base preparing for the season with Ibon Navarro. The internationals will be incorporated little by little. Brizuela and Perry will probably do so after playing the Eurobasket. The injuries to Llull in Spain and Nikola Ivanovic in Montenegro seem to definitively open the door to the championship for them. Lima will play the Americas tournament with Brazil, as will Ejim with Canada, and they will be among the last to arrive. It is not without its grace that after one of the team’s worst seasons, two of its members, Jaime Fernández and Darío, are going to play the Eurobasket with the current world champion. A fact that shows that the team was not as bad as it seemed on the field and also that our team no longer has the level it had with the generation of 80 at the helm.
In any case, Unicaja should go through that phase with the base that Ibon Navarro has working in Malaga. No team will be able to put a better quintet in the Carpena park than Alberto, Carter, Kalinoski, Thomas and Osetkowski, with Djedovic, Barreiro and the youth squad on the bench.
As the late Kobe Bryant said: “I have nothing in common with lazy people who blame others for their lack of success. We do not speak the same language. Great things come from hard work and perseverance. There are no excuses”.
The greens have gone to work and the results should come. The team should get to the start of the year very well and that will help achieve the first objectives: Play the BCL and get into the Cup. I like the typesetter calendar in the ACB because having a hard start “takes advantage” of the work done these days. It will cause the team to arrive with a point or two more than the rest at the beginning of the season and will match forces with more powerful teams like Real Madrid and could leave us ahead of Baskonia or Gran Canaria in this fight for the top of the table .
These initial victories, if they occur, should give confidence to a team and a project that is in dire need of enthusiasm, and that this season, once the pandemic is over, will have more than 6,000 fans each game in the stands.
The Spanish proverb says that “God helps the one who gets up early” in an expression that does not have a very clear origin but was paraphrased in chapter 2 of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes as “He who does not get up early with the sun does not enjoy the day ». Let’s hope that this time the proverb and Miguel de Cervantes are right.