Ergin Ataman: 'If we play the Final Four, we will win' / News - Basketnews.com

Ergin Ataman says his players are not thinking about 3-peat, but believes that if Efes reach the Final Four, his team will win claim another title.

Credit: EuroLeague Basketball via GettyImages Credit EuroLeague Basketball via GettyImages

When Anadolu Efes Istanbul reached the Final Four in 2019 and even made it to the championship game, many were surprised.

3-pointers this season

39%10,3Points made:10,3Accuracy:39,2%Place in standings:4Record max:17Record min:4Most made 3FGs:Vasilije MicicTeamEuroLeagueStatisticsSchedule

That surprise factor was not there the next season when Efes was clearly the best team in the league, but the competition had to stop shortly before the playoffs because of COVID-19. Most observers believed that Efes likely would have become champion had the Final Four been played.

Sure enough, in 2021, Efes was good to its word. Despite a slow start to the season, head coach Ergin Ataman led the team to its first EuroLeague title in Cologne, Germany, becoming just the second Turkish team ever to lift the trophy.

For the 2021-22 season, Efes had to defend the title, and at the beginning, it looked like the team would not be able to make it due to another slow start.

"Everybody told me before the season that winning back-to-back is very difficult," Ataman told the EuroLeague website. "I like to think, 'Why? If I have a great team, why is it difficult? It's one more title.' But during the season, I understood."

However, Efes found its chemistry again and ended up defending the trophy in the 2022 Belgrade Final Four after two heart-stopping games, becoming just the third back-to-back EuroLeague champion this century.

A big part of that success was Ataman's coaching style, which involves putting a lot of confidence into his players and giving them the freedom to take important decisions on the court.

"There is trust between the players and him. We build that freedom," Efes star Vasilije Micic, Final Four MVP for both of those triumphs, says. "Most people are scared to give freedom to players because they have to decide. That common trust we have with him for two to four years now became a famous philosophy."

Now, with less than one-fifth of the regular season to go, Efes is in a rough spot again, currently in 10th place and trying just to reach the playoffs again.

The two-time champs have been down that road before and know that things are not decided until the final buzzer.

"We have great players who do not think about the three-peat," Ataman says. "We want to win every day, improve, and then we will focus on winning one more time."

The very idea of a three-peat might still seem far, considering the team is in danger of missing the playoffs, but nobody knows better than Ataman what his group of players is capable of.

"I don't think that my players need a special motivation for this," he concludes. "They are winner players and, for sure, they'd like to be one more time in the Final Four. If we play the Final Four, we will win."

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