There are times when the topics crowd together to be able to deal with them: the renewals, the immaculate month of April, counting the matches by wins, that open streak of 10 victories, many things… but in the end you end up writing about what you don’t like .
In Unicaja’s victory against Joventut, we had what meant Joel Parra’s first visit to Málaga after some statements prior to the Copa del Rey in which he described the local team as “overrated”, something that around here -could not be otherwise – it didn’t go down particularly well.
Without playing devil’s advocate, and recognizing that the player was not lucky, beyond that there is little more to say. If that’s what he thinks, okay, if the reaction that the “overvalued” fans want to take is to whistle and boo him, it’s the maximum that authorizes the ticket you pay for, nothing more, and even so I think that indifference is the most effective punishment . But if you cross the sidewalk of insults, you are crossing the limits, as Carles Durán says it happened.
At the press conference, he forgot about the game and focused almost exclusively on that act that, once the game was over and without witnesses, his version was taken for granted. It is not good at all, just as it was something unworthy what a Joventut fan carried out in the Eurocup the day that Iago dos Santos from the ratiopharm Ulm was insulted several times from the stands, with shouts of “monkey” by a version from Badalona Dian Fossey, who had no problem distinguishing and applauding Andrés Féliz or Yannick Kraag, of the same race as the Brazilian.
I confess that I’m not especially good at accepting everything about you simply because I’m wearing the same shirt. I think that intelligence is not at odds with love for colors and regardless of whether or not one is right, I did not like Jonathan Barreiro’s reaction in his day to Sadiel Rojas’s provocation and the farewell ovation, because it was very hard to give a minimum of reason to the Dominican whose long and extensive career precedes him for bad, but our Galician was wrong, harmed the team and that is already closed.
Of course, everything is nothing with what was seen last Friday in Madrid in the second game of the Euroleague between Real and Partizan. One of the most embarrassing episodes of our sport?… for me yes, especially because one of our sport’s institutions with the best track record is involved and, above all, because the reactions to something that should have stayed there They are even more embarrassing than the track.
In the reactions I also put the sanctions imposed by the Euroleague, some that seem to be written by the Ultrasur. The acts initiated by Sergio Llull, who understands that the best way to defend Kevin Punter is to give him a punch that is suspiciously reminiscent of the one that Nicolas Batum struck Juan Carlos Navarro in the London 2012 Olympic semifinal, remain unpunished. The Frenchman then declared in Marca that “I would understand that FIBA sanctioned me for some matches or fined me, I would see it as normal.” Now, the Spaniard has been left as a victim finding justification in something as bizarre as the New Yorker’s attitude, winning by 15 with just over a minute to go. Good thing he never went to the NBA. Batum from the Spanish press wanted to banish him to the Castle of If, now, Llull’s has been described as: “lance of the game”, “foul”, “hard foul”. The truth is that even seeing the attack of sanity and logic that two personalities of our sport like Zeljko Obradovic and Rudy Fernández had on the same day, the real reaction seen later has been to give Guershon Yabusele the title, the recognition of his public (! ) and 35 minutes of play in Real Madrid’s first game after the fight.
It is clear that this Euroleague has ended for the French and we must take advantage of it to the extent that the coach finds it useful, but at the Merengue club, this crisis has been managed almost as badly as Pablo Laso’s departure from the bench: from the victimizing side, disregarding the lordship that has always been displayed and using the related media to generate data in any way, some as squeaky as using partial medical reports at Laso’s departure or analysis of photos from all angles of the fight from WiZink. I am waiting for an image of Lessort double-parking in his compositor days or some strain of COVID “Made in Pionir Hall” that will come to light in any media in Madrid.
Leaving aside how badly the Madrid club comes out of the comparison of past eras, what really affects us is what we want to convey, whether it be to the viewer who thinks that the best way to cheer on their team is to resort to any medium that either to underestimate the contrary, or that the child who wants to look like his idols is imitating attitudes that have nothing to do with our sport instead of the technical resources displayed by the stars in which they have to look.
I understand much more that in a confrontation you have to try so that the opponent cannot be as good as usual on the field, but above all, that it is based on the fact that our team must display the best it has. So, victory tastes better.