PLAZA, JOAN
Unicaja Malaga
"Congratulations to Valencia. I believed it was a hard-fought game, in which when it goes down to a close finish, both teams could have deserved to win. Not even people in Valencia could doubt we could have won the game. We had a great attitude and gave a good effort. Sometimes we didn't measure that effort; we made some mistakes rushing things a bit, but no-one gave up and looked down. We tried to help each other, play as a team and would like to think that what Unicaja is doing deserves that the series goes to Game 3. Then we may go to Game 3 and lose by 30 or 40 points, I don't know, but we will all agree that Unicaja deserves to play Game 3, in front of a sellout crowd at La Fonteta and maximum pressure. We are making a huge effort; we tied two quarters tonight, lost one by 2 points and another one by 4, and that costs us the game, it was enough. We deserve to bring the series back to this place and have a great night in Malaga. We will need to make less mistakes in Malaga, but I hope we can be back here and fight for our chances in the fourth quarter, or sooner. Forcing Game 3 would be sports justice. In a final, emotions run fast. We have a series of players who have been in finals, but don't have the experience of some Valencia players who have been to many finals and won some of them. You don't buy it in a shop; you acquire it in finals like this. We didn't make big mistakes, but we were anxious when they took the lead. The team recovered and got closer, but also lost a 10-point lead in a couple of minutes. We have to improve that and try not to let them return to the game."