ABA TV: Janković - “We need to improve our defense and offensive rebounding”

In a conversation, made for the ABA League TV, Mega Leks big man Nikola Janković shared his impressions after the first game of the ABA League Finals against Crvena zvezda Telekom and revealed his expectations ahead of the next game. Take a look.

What went wrong in the first game, so that you failed to take advantage in the series?

"We have made them lots of problems, however we could play even better. Especially we could defend their transition game better and we could have allowed them less easy buckets than we did. Our offensive rebounding was a catastrophe. We only grabbed one, which should not happen. Simply, we lacked energy, perhaps we got scared. We need to improve those two things before the second game, the rest was good.”

How big of a problem is it for you to play without all those injured players?

"Of course it makes things difficult for us, especially against Crvena zvezda Telekom, which have 2 or 3 equally good players at every position. This is their biggest advantage and this was evident in 37th and 38th minutes of the game, where we caught them and then they made the difference in two or three offensive possessions. Simply, it"s difficult to play best of five series with 6 or 7 players in the rotation. However, this does not mean that we would surrender.”

Your aggressive style of defense is your trademark, but it is difficult to play with such a short rotation of players. Do you believe that you will change your style of defending for the remainder of the series?