After four years on the bench of UNICS Kazan, head coach Dimitris Priftis is satisfied to have reached one goal – taking his team to next season's Turkish Airlines EuroLeague – and is now focused on another, lifting the 7DAYS EuroCup trophy.
Dimitris Priftis, UNICS: 'It will be a good fight'
Interviews
10 mins read
When Dimitris Priftis joined UNICS Kazan in 2017, he was a well-known coach in his home country, Greece, but not so famous in continental basketball. Four years later, Priftis has not only maintained UNICS as a solid team in all its, but he now has the chance to become the first Greek coach to win the 7DAYS EuroCup title. Priftis has a 52-26 winning record (66.7%) with UNICS in the EuroCup, but none of those victories were more satisfying than the last two. Down 1-0 in its best-of-three semifinals series against previously undefeated Virtus Segafredo Bologna, UNICS managed to beat the Italian powerhouse twice to storm into the EuroCup Finals. In so doing, Priftis, 52, has already led UNICS into the 2021-22 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague. Now, he wants the club to lift its second EuroCup trophy by winning the finals against AS Monaco starting on Tuesday, April 27. "We made a lot of improvements during the last four seasons. Overall, for me, it means something very important to stay in a team for more than one year," Priftis told EuroCupBasketball.com. "It is, by itself, a small reward, that the club believes in you and keeps you for a second season, to continue working with you."
Coach, congratulations on reaching the EuroCup Finals for the first time. How satisfying is it to be so close to the title?
"Thank you very much. We are very happy. I am very glad. It is an effort that started here four years ago. I had one more participation in the EuroCup with my ex-team Aris. I am very glad that we managed to reach the finals, plus the fact that being there means that we made it to the EuroLeague next season. I think it is a double benefit and makes this achievement much bigger. So we are very glad and I hope we will enjoy the finals next week."
Like you just said, UNICS has also qualified for the 2021-22 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague. How important is that for the club and you, personally?
"It is a big honor. It was one of my dreams, to reach the EuroLeague with a team and participate in the process to make it. It is important for me: I am not going to a team that is already in the EuroLeague but getting there with my team. I reached this goal with my team. Of course, it is still open if I continue in UNICS, but this is how I approach it. If I continue, it is very important for me that I did it with my team. And for the club, it is an effort that we made in the last four years. Of course, last year was a particular season that never ended. In my first year here, we had a chance to get to the EuroLeague through the VTB League. We played a final four and lost the semifinal game against Khimki. We were close. The next year, we played with Valencia in the semifinals, a very tough matchup against a very tough opponent. We were very close but didn't manage to make it, and this is why we are very happy that we now have achieved this goal."
"It was one of my dreams, to reach the EuroLeague."
After reaching the EuroLeague, how high is the motivation to finish the job and win the EuroCup title?
"The trophy in front of us is a very important goal, and that will keep us alert and motivated. I think we are very ambitious and want to fight for this trophy although we already made it to the EuroLeague and that job is already done. It is something that we discussed together. The trophy is something that would be with us forever. For both teams and all players who will participate in the finals, it is important to win the title, and it will be a good fight."
How would you summarize your team's semifinals series win against Virtus Segafredo Bologna?
"Overall, we had a really bad preparation period. I am going now back to September. We got hit by COVID early, as a group, so most of our guys got infected in that period. We almost didn't play any friendly games and had a very bad preparation period, almost nothing, almost zero. So we started playing games without having this part of the season, which is very important for every group. Progressively, we started to get better during the games, game by game. We had really good performances after Christmas, a good sequence of wins. We had a tough [quarterfinal] series against [Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar] and faced Virtus. It was a very interesting series. I would say that, before the series, Virtus is a team that I would like to have avoided. They had a very, very impressive regular season, being unbeatable. I thought that was the toughest team that we could play against, with very experienced players and a great coach who is a big personality in basketball. Obviously, we expected a very difficult series. In the first game, we were close and felt that we could have beaten them. We believed and had faith in Game 2. We managed to win it and play this final game in Bologna. And in one game, anything can happen. We had a good performance, shot the ball well, and won this game."
What are the strong points of your EuroCup Finals opponent, AS Monaco?
"Monaco is a very physical team. They are playing well, using their athleticism. They play very physically and very hard, regarding contact. They are strong in the lane and the best offensive rebounding team in the EuroCup. It is difficult to score against them because they press constantly, denying every pass. They play with high intensity overall and you must be very concentrated not to make turnovers because that will give them easy points in transition, which is part of their game. As I said before, it is very important to get defensive rebounds. They have good offensive rebounders like [Mathias] Lessort and [Wilfried] Yeguete, even Marcos Knight, who is a very aggressive offensive rebounder although he is a guard. It is hard to control them and, in general, it is a hard team to play against, very physical. They play with high intensity."
Both teams have talented guards, undersized but strong centers, and great physicality. From a tactical standpoint, does it make things more difficult for both coaches?
"Yes, I agree. Regarding physicality, as you said, there are some particular things that we can attack. And of course, we have some weaknesses that they will attack. I don't think that it is time to overanalyze this, but for sure there are some certain things that both teams can use to create advantages and find open shots in better conditions. First, I would say that it is a matter of who will play with the most physicality and who will make the least mistakes, because of this defensive style of game. For me, this is the main thing. I would stay with the basics: not to turn the ball over, especially in the passes; control the rebounds; play decent, consistent one-on-one defense. And then everything else, of course, plays a role but is secondary in these types of games."
"The trophy is something that would be with us forever"
Jamar Smith, the new EuroCup MVP, is the only player on either team to have won the competition before. How much of an advantage is he?
"First of all, Jamar is a special player for me. I have been with him in Kazan for four years. It was my choice to bring him here. We have great cooperation, like a coach and a second coach on the floor. He is very experienced. I am very glad that he is MVP. He deserves it because of his stability, persistence and working spirit. He is a very, very good worker who never quits, has very good psychology, encouraging his teammates. He is the captain of the team and, of course, it is an advantage that he has already been in this situation, to play the finals and win it. He knows the psychology of those games and transfers it to the rest of the group. It is a luxury, a great weapon for me to have his character and his personality in my team. I have a special feeling for him, and I am glad that he was awarded the EuroCup MVP trophy this season."
No coach except Stanislav Eremin from 2000 to 2006 has stayed at UNICS longer than you. What makes you so comfortable in Kazan?
"First of all, I would say I am a type of character that usually stays longer where I am going. I connect with the people and create bonds with the team. As you know, in the last seven years, I worked in two clubs. I am the type of person that looks for stability, and I also respect and appreciate the fact that [team president] Evgeny Bogachev, his family, the administration of the club overall, gave me this faith and this support these years. The fact that I have stayed here for four years is not just up to me; it is a mutual job. I am very glad that we have very good cooperation with the family and together, with Claudio Coldebella, we have a great organization. We made a lot of improvements during the last four seasons. Overall, for me, it means something very important to stay in a team for more than one year. It is, by itself, a small reward, that the club believes in you and keeps you for a second season, to continue working with you."
How great would it be for the club to lift the EuroCup trophy, a decade after its first crown in Treviso?
"It is a big goal, no doubt. Of course, it was a different format in 2011. I think that it is a little bit more difficult now to reach the finals and win the title. But UNICS is a team that always tries to create a good roster. They have always had a pretty good budget to create a good team. As you see, we are always in the top four or top eight teams in the EuroCup, with chances to go to the EuroLeague, a competition in which we have played several times. After four years and the effort we made, we deserved to be in the EuroLeague, but also to claim this trophy. It is a big honor for the club to have the chance to win the EuroCup title for the second time."