I am back after hoping in my preseason blogs that we could help to lift Cibona up again. I am happy to say that right now, everything is good and we've become what we wanted to be in the beginning of the season, and this is a competitive team. We feel we are now on the level where we can compete with any team in Europe, so that is something we can be happy about. What's really interesting is that maybe two games we lost gave me the strongest sense that we have reached where we needed to be. We knew we would probably be good at home. We have a tough court and always have, but in previous years we didn't manage to win even one game on the road. This year, we won our first one away, at Le Mans, but honestly we didn't play very well. Not our top level, let's say. But we won, and proved something important, that we can win away even when we are not playing so good. That helped our confidence. Then we played on the road at two very tough courts, in Malaga and Tel Aviv. We were there to the end, close to winning both games, and that was a step forward. We were competitive, even on the road. We didn't win either, but especially in Tel Aviv, we had a chance to win. After that game in Tel Aviv, I think we realized that against good teams on tough courts, we can now compete on the same level. We knew we were now good enough as a team, solid enough and consistent enough, to play with anybody. I am happy about it, of course, and I just hope it... more

A fantastic night! This is the only way I have to describe what happened on Wednesday at Datch Forum, when we were able to win against the reigning champions from CSKA Moscow for our second win in a row in the Euroleague, following our first win versus Panionios, also in front of our fans. The extraordinary fact was that we won this big match after recovering from 20 points down in the first half and 17 at the intermission - against such at team as CSKA, too!. It looked like an easy walk for CSKA but we showed great character and big desire to do something special, pushed by our crowd, which deserves special mention. It's crazy to think, as I write this a day later, about what happened: if you win a game rallying, it's great, but if you do so against a team like Moscow, it's more incredible! It's something that just does not happen every day.

We talked about the crowd: simply great! They participated in an extraordinary way, giving us a big charge. It looked like a final at times, and the celebrations we had on the court at the final buzzer will be something that will remain in our minds. A lot of my friends who watched the game on TV poked fun at me for celebrating, telling me that we just won a game, an important and well-played game, but just a game. But in my opinion, the TV didn't give to viewers the right feeling and the atmosphere we were experiencing at the same moment at Datch Forum, where there was a magic and... more

I can say that I was unlucky not playing those first three games after getting hurt against PAOK in the Greek League right before the Euroleague started. It was not good timing, because I was very excited to play again in the Euroleague, but also because I couldn't help my teammates in games against the three big opponents we started with: Real Madrid, CSKA Moscow and Efes Pilsen. Besides me not playing all three, as I said, we had our center, Giannis Giannoulis, out against CSKA and Efes, and Branko Cvetkovic didn't go to Istanbul, either. It was difficult for me to watch the games from the bench. I was very nervous, more than if I was playing. It's not easy to watch your teammates fighting when you know you can help them. But now, I can say that after those four games, maybe no one expected us to be 2-2. I am sure people thought that at least three of them would be lost. But we won an important game against Efes on the road, maybe a game that no one expected us to win, and now we can feel that we have a chance to make the next round.

We lost the first two games, against Madrid and CSKA, with much bigger differences than we imagined, but we weren't a complete team at that time. Maybe only we knew the full reason for those bad scores. Our injury problems not only affected the games, but our practices, too. We knew that we needed our full roster to help find our rhythm of play. It was difficult to find... more