“To keep the team core is not luxury, it's foresight”

Andrey Vatutin said in the locker room after the SuperCup semifinal, we are 2-0 in EuroLeague. How serious can we be about the preseason results?

It's preseason, so it's too early to judge the teams to say if we could win or not the EuroLeague teams, but you can definitely say we can compete, you can definitely say we can look everybody in the eye and our team is on that level. Now, if it was during the season, if this team was playing in EuroLeague, what would be the results, this is just guesswork. You can never really know.

Can you say that in this preseason games, you also practice motivation?

I had to point out motivation a few times, but thank God the team we have is consisted by motivated people, by high level professional and winning personalities, so we don't have to work too much to that. You just need to remind them and they do it. Motivation is something that we take for granted in this team. You wouldn't be in this team if you lacked motivation. So I think this is something you can see in every game and in preseason. Even though this are exhibition games, you still got to work on the attitude and display the attitude in every game.

How satisfied are you with the quality of this preseason starting from physical shape of the players and from the very beginning and how it actually went from the beginning to the end?

Everything was exactly as expected, I have to admit that I had some questions in my mind, if everybody's gonna come back fit or if I should have started my preseason earlier, but in the end, everybody confirmed what we knew about them, that they’re high level professionals. Everybody was already in shape when we started the preseason. The team is together for a lot of time, so everything we had to show was just done in very short time and in a lot of aspect this is an ideal way to work and an ideal preseason for us.

You had a luxury of having the same core of the players practically, with little editions. What are the changes that you wanted to make during this preseason to adjust the team to the new roster, to the new season, to the new reality?

Look, first of all, it's not luxury, it's foresight. This is something that we had the patience and the correct attitude to keep it, not everybody understands that this is something, how this is done, how you get to keep the same team, and how you can ignore the fashion of making transfers and who makes the most transfers makes the best team. So this is something we did and something the management should take credit for, for not giving in to transfer mongering, you know, like to the lust for transfers. So after that, like you said, the team is the same. Therefore, the system is pretty similar. There had to be some changes, some very small changes because you cannot always keep exactly the same thing for one reason or the other. But the blueprints were there and we constructed the new team based on the same blueprints.

Going a little bit into details, the thing that everybody sees during the preseason that you were changing the starting lineups, practically every game. What was this, you were trying to find some new combinations or maybe this is like a kind of, as you said, a blueprint for the next season, you will be adjusting to several different situations?

In general, you have to understand that, this is not football, we don't have a starting 11, where you choose your best players and you go with that. Starting five, is not as important as how you're going to flow through the game. So a lot of times this is connected to how am I going to keep my consistency through the game. At each moment of the game, the team has to be to have some specific points to it, some specific focus points. This is something what were testing, we're doing different combinations to see the results and to figure out what is the best way to work.

Definitely the biggest change (we didn't have many biggest big changes on the roster) is that Amath left and you are starting now to adjust on 4-position. You are trying Astapkovich, you are trying Chadov and you still have a big role for Simon, at least during the preseason games. Can you say a little bit about this?

Look, Amath was a big loss for us, he was a key player, and very important for the team's performance over the last years. It would be ideal to be able to keep him, but unfortunately, this didn't happen. Then we had to figure out how to replace him and for me, the best way was to utilize the players that I already had. You had to reform in order to give chances to everybody, and you know, everything is connected. Position 4 is connected, also to position 3 at least in our team. And we had to reshuffle a little bit the roles. Things are pretty clear, but we still had to test some issues to educate ourselves in some other ways of functioning, so far it’s going pretty well, but probably since like you said, that's the biggest change, that's still part of the game that we are reshaping the most.

Also probably one of the reasons was that Astapkovich was playing “four” at Nizhny Novgorod under coach Zoran Lukic, so he knows how to play this role and he even succeeded when he was in Nizhny.

First of all, I work with him since he was in the second team of CSKA. He was just coming out for practices like Klyuchenkov and Zaitsev. And I always knew the guy. We did have the experience like you mentioned of him actually playing the position consistently in Nizhny. He has a characteristics that can support the position. We even tried a few times during last season in some lineups. We did that test. So I figured that this was the best way to use him and the best way to cover the position.

Previous seasons we sometimes even were using him as a “two”.

Yeah, actually, you know, this is a good thing about Astap. He's very versatile, so he can do different things. And it's a luxury for a coach to have a player that can play consistently and performing at multiple positions.

Livio looked great this preseason looks like he ready to take some big role or it just seems like this in several games?

He's in great shape, I would say that Liv kept going from where he stopped at the end of the season. He had excellent playoffs. He's keeping the same momentum, obviously, he worked hard through the summer. His role was always big over here. He's one of the key players of this team, he is sharing the position 5 with Tonye, and his performance was always a key factor for the team performance, and he's one of the players that really picked up his performance in playoffs, and the result was obvious.

Say few words about AC, he just came, he is a new guy he has to take the big role right away.

Yeah, AC probably had the biggest, the toughest task than anybody else. Being a guard, being a player that has to play multiple positions and also being the new guy in the team and a team that already flows, the team where everybody knows everything. So he had to learn the system, he had to do it from multiple positions. And in a role, you know that he is not supposed to stay in the corner and wait for others to do things, he has to be active, so his task was toughest, I would say, tougher than for anybody else in the team. But we're on the right path. We're all expecting him to get more and more and more as time progresses and he integrates with the team.

You also signed new contract this year. How important this is for you? What kind of a vision you see in front of you in the next three years.

This is huge for me. This is very important to get this trust and to feel the love of both fans of CSKA and a club of CSKA, the management and everybody showing faith in me. For me, CSKA is the greatest job ever, you know, I've been so many years over here, I know the club. They give me everything I need to work. They provide me with good contentions, with good players, with good squads, everything is ideal for me to show what I'm capable of. CSKA was the first one to see this, and I'm happy to continue over here. I love the club, I love the city, I love living in Russia. This is something very rare for a coach to get such trust, this three-year (with the prolongation) contract, you don't see that very often in a coaching position in Europe anywhere. We are the most expendable people in the team, more expendable of players. We are the first one to be sacrificed every time something goes wrong. So this is very special for me, and you know, on the other hand, even when I came over here in my first option was for a couple of months, I always worked in a way like I am going to stay here for 10 years, so I always work having something long-term in my mind, and I'm glad that the way I was thinking now is actually going to be useful for me in the future.

And the last question, the season starts: what are your expectations talking about the opponents, a new system with the in-season Cup. What do you expect of it?

Well, you know, we are CSKA and we are expected to compete for the titles. Unfortunately, you can’t ever guarantee that. All the teams were four teams that going after the title, only one will win, and three will go home making their own conclusions. The only thing I want to be able to say when season is finished is that we gave it everything we had, we fought and we displayed championship character. Usually this is rewarded with a championship, but like I had said, there are no guarantees in basketball and in sports of success. The only thing you can count on is that you work hard and you fought for every game, and you put your soul into this. I don't want to talk too much about my opponents, you know, I focus on my own team, but I can say we have a very strong championship, very few good championships can claim to have four top level teams like we do. I would add also a team like Uralmash that shows that they have a vision and intention to compete with the top four teams, the traditional powers of the league. Therefore, I would say this is a very competitive championship. We know every game is going to be tough unless we give our 100%, so that's the goal to build a team that fights every game, fights every minute and gives everything they have. And at the end, if we lose a game, you're gonna be sure that it's not going to be because we didn't try hard enough.