JAKARTA (FIBA Asia Champions Cup) - Sam Daghles is quite the unsung hero in Jordanian basketball.

Having
played his role to perfection in the first two games with 5 assists in
each game, the 29-year-old point guard was forced out of the third game
with an ankle injury when Zain played Satria Muda on Friday.

But
he put paid to any fears saying “Not to worry. I’ll be back soon” as he
spoke to S Mageshwaran of FIBA Asia on the sidelines of the 20th FIBA
Asia Champions Cup.

Excerpts

Three back-to-back wins in as many days is a good start…

Happy to start with such a record in a long championship. But I think the real test will come in the quarterfinals.

Our last game in the group (against Al Arabi) is a nice way for us to head into the play-offs.

Winning
the opening three games has given us a good feel conditions and boosted
our confidence. We have to consolidate on this from now.

But a lot of top players are getting injured during the tournament…

Did you notice one interesting point in that? It’s all happening to WABA teams.

I
think the injuries are a result of the long season behind us. We have
been playing continuously almost right from October. Our local league,
then the WABA qualifiers and then the Arabs…

And then we have the camps with the National Team.

This is the case with most of the top WABA teams, especially from Jordan and Lebanon.

But then these are the hazards of professional sport.

There
was a time when we wanted more and more games. Now, I think it’s the
other way around. And our local leagues are getting more and more
intense.

We definitely need an off-season. All the more so,
because all the players these days are very professional about
utilizing the off-season.

What do you think you need to do more to win the championship here?

I think we are doing OK as a team.

But
we are not able to put away our opponents. That’s very important if you
want to win the championship. Call it killer instinct or whatever, we
need to get that spring in our steps.

But like I said the real road to the title begins tomorrow.

I guess and I hope we’ll come along well together.

Isn’t Zain this time virtually the Jordanian National Team?

It’s
a deliberate move to prepare for the FIBA Asia Championship in China,
which will also be qualifiers for the 2010 FIBA World Championships.

We
(Zain) anyway were almost the Jordan National Team. Now with Zaid Abbas
from ASU) and Wesam Alsoos (of Al Riyadi Amman) on loan we completely
the National Team.

And our coach (Mario Palma) is also the NT coach.

We are working hard to book our ticket to Turkey.

Your thoughts on current Asian basketball.

I
think we have come miles from where we were some five years ago. But I
also think we have miles to go before reaching the European standards.

Many of our countries are having very strong and professional leagues now. But I still feel we should regional leagues.

I personally think a WABA league is overdue for the last five years or so.

Also I think we need to pick and choose our imports. No point in picking any foreigner just because he is a big name.

Teams
have to build their core on their local players and then choose the
foreigners to fit where they think they need that player.

To put
it in a nutshell, we need leagues across regions even if not entire
Asia. And we need to build the base of our basketball on our local
players.

This entry was posted on 17. May 2009 at 18:03 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.