ENGLISH VERSION
ENGLISH VERSIONFirst and foremost: how are you, Pablo the man?
You know I’m ok! I feel ok. It’s been a long year for me because since I was 16 I’ve played basketball as a player and as a coach. This was my first year without doing basketball and it was strange, for sure. I missed it but phisically I’m ok. I spend more time with my family, I went to concerts and watch soccer games. I did a lot of things that during the years before I was not able to do. I’m feeling well, in fact I’m very happy to be back coaching and really excited to start new season!
Are you ready? Did you watch EuroLeague games outside of the competition? What did you see as level of basketball, tendencies, waves…?
At the end it’s basketball. There are new tendencies, for sure. The good thing was that I could watch games without scouting them. So many times you see the game thinking about our teams, our coaches, players, bla bla bla, the pressure of the game! That helped me to be more realistic because, as I spoke to Xavi Pascual in September and he told me “Pablo, if you’re gonna watch everything that’ll drive you crazy!”, I thought it was better to relax, to watch games that at the beginning you didn’t expect to be so interesting: at the end, you can learn a lot from these games! I watched very good games during the morning, slowly, realistic and learning. I watched players, I spent time watching a lot of games maybe with a different attitude as I did when I was coaching.
Who are for you, watching games and EuroLeague outside of the competition, three of the most emerging coaches for EL’s future? How do you see its future? We all know Gran Canaria didn’t accept the license by EL Board because of financial problems. Does this format need a review?
Also at the end of the previous season and all 2022/2023 the war showed us a competition without russian teams. We’ve seen probably the most compact season. What I mean with compact? There were a lot of teams with great rosters, a lot of competitiveness, great competition through all the year. We also saw some weaknesses that we must somehow rebuild. I think the future of the competition is bright because people follows games, they see clutch competition. But I think it was a great year to learn from and improve in the future.
Now, another universe waits for Pablo Laso! All player and coach career in Spain, with a little touch in Trieste, now you’ll be Bayern Munich’s head coach. Which are your expectations? Do you already have a cler vision of how your roster will look like or, due to your past experiences, you know that your initial thoughts will be disrupted by market?
Expectations are very high. When you meet a team like Bayern you know you’ll deal with a big brand, big club, well-known around the world. Before it was only football team but now also basketball plays his part. I think we have a solid fanbase and roster’s structure, we want to continue growing up as a team. There’s a bright future in front of us, we’ll play in the beautiful Arena in less than a yer, we hope. That’s a big challenge for the team, fans, city, club and also for me. I’ll coach for the first time outside of Spain but basketball is basketball all around the world. I’m lucky that I went abroad several times during my life, in Italy and in USA, so I won’t be totally unprepared. I think Bayern has a good core of players who’s playing together for years and we’ll add other players who need to immediately understand they’re playing for Bayern Munich, at the highest level. They have to show their mentality and to be a winning time since the first day. That’s something that I want to make clear: that’s my ambition as a coach but I know it won’t be easy. We have a big challenge in front of us. It’s very early to know what team we will have during the summer but we will be very competitive.
For the construction of an ideal roster, in 2023 how is fisicality and athleticism important of handlers?
Basketball has changed a lot during last years. When I started coaching Real Madrid we used to play around 50 games. Now we’re going up to 80. Teams that play for every championship need fresh legs, they have to be ready to play every night. In Europe you’ve not only one competition with Regular Season and Playoffs: it’s very competitive from the beginning, with National Cups, domestic leagues and EuroLeague. Plus, players usually play with their National Team. We touch 100 games per year! That made the game change so quickly: it’s important when you make a roster to have these ideas in your head, you gotta be sure who can play and who cannot play that night. You have to know if you’ll push a player to play 3 times a week, how long he’ll resist, how he will manage injuries. You have to consider all these situations but you can’t hide the importance of experience and basketball knowledge. It’s easy, doesn’t it?
Media and journalist tell basketball from external eye, coaches and players make basketball. We have a different point of view of the same object. Because of your past in Real Madrid you know better than anyone that amount of pressure by media members. How can we improve our relationship to create a better product? How can you help us and viceversa?
According to my experience, I never saw a media against me. Never. If they’ll want to go against me it’s their problem, not mine. My idea is media wants to help basketball. If they don’t want it, there’s the problem. My problem is deal with my players, win games and make sure that basketball control my team and not the media. I want to help the media, I don’t want media help me! I can’t seat in front of you and pray “Please help me!”. That would be very stupid. You have to talk about what you see. Am I be able to change that? No. My relation with you has always been good because I cannot have the influence of making you understand what I see. We’re humans, we’ve different ideas but we got to understand and listen to each other. How many times I heard coaches saying “I don’t look media”? Come on, this is bullshit! It’s not real! There’s no one coach or player who doesn’t know what you talk about him. You can even hear in the stands, booing at you or clapping at you. I would love if everyone love Pablo Laso but it’s impossible. I’m not worried about that, I’m worried about my team, my players. You can’t go inside of you and change what I see and what I am. If I’m wearing a white shirt and I say “I’m wearing black” you can’t say “It’s true”, you gotta say “He’s stupid”.
Your departure from Real Madrid was told with so many errors by our side. Probably no one had understood yet real reasons behind that decision. Whose’s the fault? Yours? Club’s? Reporters’?
I gave my explanation, ask the club! My explanation was clear: when I started coachin’ 20 tears ago I knew I could get cut as a player and as a coach, that’s part of our life. We have to understand it. I’ve nothing to say anymore, the question is to be asked at the club. What can I say? They told me “You won’t coach Real anymore”: finish! I’ve to think about future and which would have been my next step. That’s the only thing I could do, there was nothing I could say to change. That’s reality and we have to live the reality!
