Hi, Euroleague fans. As someone who worked their way up a long ladder to be here, I am very excited to be going into the Euroleague playoffs with Caja Laboral. I came over to Europe from a small university and moved year by year from the third division in Spain, to the second, then the first. Now, to be with a team going into the Euroleague playoffs, with the whole continent paying attention, and beyond, is very exciting. It's a great opportunity for any player. Not many chances like this come up. And I think any player would agree with me that we all want to prove ourselves on this stage.

I can say another thing that everyone will agree on: what a way to arrive! Our game to qualify to the playoffs, well, I've never been a part of something like that. It was a once-in-a-lifetime comeback, being down 12 with a couple minutes left against Cibona. Some of us on the bench were thinking: Is this it? Then, all of a sudden, we got some turnovers, some three-pointers, and we were down by just 4 points with a minute left. Everyone was into the game, we got to overtime as we hoped and we somehow pulled off the qualification. The mood among us afterwards was disbelief. How did we do that? It was amazing, that's for sure. But we're now among the top eight teams in Europe, it's a new stage, and we are ready to go again.

Of course, our opponents from CSKA has a lot of guys who have been together awhile. They were here in Vitoria earlier... more