"We decided to return to Israel, then Messina sent a message. The plans changed"

Life under the strict corona policy in New Zealand.

The children who have not seen the house for three years.

Return to the assistant coach slot.

The traumatic memory of the Milan miracle.

And watching from afar the championship of Hapoel Holon.

Dan Shamir in an exclusive interview

Ehrle Weisberg

07/26/2022

Tuesday, July 26, 2022, 11:00 a.m

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Dan Shamir had a guaranteed contract with the New Zealand Rikers for the coming season, and also for the one after.

But about two and a half months ago he announced that he was leaving.

Modi Maor, who was designated a "co-coach" next to him, stayed to take his place, and that was just the beginning of the story.

Despite the estimates - including by Shamir himself - that he will return to coach in the Premier League, an even more interesting line came later: the Israeli will join forces with Ettore Messina, and will serve as his assistant at Olympia Milan.

"At the end of the last season, I decided together with my family that it was time to return to Israel. The club said goodbye to me, and the next morning I got up and left the phone in the bedroom. A short time later, my wife Sahar brought it to me and said, 'You have a message from Messina. I think I know what it is about.' ", says Shamir in an exclusive interview with Walla!

sport.

"We didn't plan to do another relocation, but Sahar is smart enough to know that if an offer comes from Atura, certainly with such timing, it will have a significant factor. The children have also been through so much with me already, that they are just waiting for the twist that always comes in the plot. Each of them reacted in a different way, And we quickly realized that we are now entering another interesting and challenging period."

"I wanted to return to Israel, and that was my original intention - not necessarily for considerations related to basketball, but more for family and life. For three years we hardly saw any friends, nor the extended family. I was sure that I would coach here, and I already had conversations with several teams, but at least On the professional side, Milan's entry into the picture made it difficult for me. I knew that this was an opportunity that would not come back."

"Between myself, I hoped that one day I would be able to connect with him again."

Shamir with Ettore Messina in 2014 in CSKA (photo: official website, Mikhail Serbin, CSKA)

- But you were already Messina's assistant nine years ago at CSKA Moscow. Many were surprised that you didn't take on the position of head coach. Aren't you afraid to go back and position yourself as an assistant coach?

"I'm afraid all the time, naturally.

I like to be an assistant coach once every few years, certainly for a person and a coach like Ettore.

It's challenging, you're at a high level, and it's fun for me.

I can learn and be exposed to new things.

I have no lack of respect in this section.

I was a head coach for 14 seasons, and another eight I worked as an assistant.

My ego wasn't hurt."

"No, that's not true.

A coach's career has ups and downs, and sometimes things are not up to you.

You have to do what's right for you at that moment, and even if I'm not happy with every decision, I'm not one of those who regret it in retrospect.

Not everyone has the opportunity to return from Australia to the top of the Euroleague.

"The year with Ettore at CSKA was important and had a great impact on me, but I didn't exhaust my work with him.

At the end of that season he went to be an assistant coach in San Antonio, and if I could have continued to work with him, I would have.

Between myself, I hoped that one day I could connect with him again.

That's the first thing I thought about and remembered when he turned and said what he told me."

"When we decided to leave New Zealand, and it was not an easy decision, the main reason was to return to Israel. My eldest son is already 16 years old, and my daughters are 12 and 9. Mentally we are Israelis, but we realized that staying abroad, beyond the three years we have already spent , will only take us further away from home.

In two years Jonathan will have to come to Israel and enlist in the army, and the girls' language and mentality difficulties will also be greater.

We decided that our place is in Israel.

The fact that there was another change, and I'm going to Milan, didn't change the need for the family to be here."

"The children have already been through so much with me, that they are just waiting for the twist that always comes in the plot."

Dan Shamir and the laptop (photo: Walla! system, Audi Citiat)

Professionally, Shamir's (47) time in New Zealand was not particularly successful;

In his first season, the Breakers missed the ticket to the playoffs in the Australian league, and in the last two years - with the corona epidemic and the extreme policies of the local government setting the tone - his team finished at the bottom.

Last year it fell to the penultimate place, and the season ended at the bottom of the table with a record of 23:5.

"As much as we want to analyze and criticize ourselves, we have come to the conclusion that nothing can be learned from the past two years. It is difficult to understand from afar the situation, which only got worse over time. At first, with the outbreak of the epidemic, we entered an 11-month break, and we could not bring players to New Zealand. Then, in the second season, we went to Australia and we couldn't come back. Once every two or three weeks we moved from place to place, played two or three games, and packed our bags because they found a few isolated cases of corona in that city. My family stayed in New Zealand, and we didn't see each other for six months .

"There was hope that all of this would change with the vaccinations, but that didn't happen either. You don't have any home games, any characteristics of a normal basketball team, and you become a vagabond. We were in survival mode, while all the other teams in the Australian league are living completely normal lives. The most situation The season was extreme, when we lived for six months in an apartment hotel in Melbourne, with the three children. Everyone who hears the stories we had to deal with, asks me why I didn't get up and leave at some point."

"We didn't think of returning to Israel, because it wasn't possible at all at first, and then we were dragged into it. We thought that life would return to normal, and there are also the considerations of livelihood. The most extreme situation was this year. Return to Israel? It's a very complicated type of escape. We said we would wait for the end of the season , and when that happened, it was already possible to enter New Zealand again. We sent the children back to school, and we decided that we had had enough and that at the end of the school year we would return to Israel."

"We had a New Zealand player who was injured, and couldn't even fly to see the family."

Shamir and Modi Maor (Photo: GettyImages, Albert Perez)

- and beyond basketball, the New Zealand prime minister's "zero infection" policy has occupied many around the world.

What was it like to live under these limitations?

"The first months were amazing, after the lockdown that the whole world went through. You are indeed in a kind of prison, because you cannot enter the country, and those who leave cannot return, but in the beginning we lived in a free manner. I am not an epidemiologist and do not enter areas that I do not understand, and I understand that the thought We would have hermetically sealed ourselves off, become completely clean - and once we were vaccinated, we would open the borders. If it had succeeded, it could have been tremendous. But after three years it became clear that it didn't work that way.

"New Zealand was perhaps the last in the world to vaccinate, and even then , the vaccination percentages were low, because life apparently continues as usual and people are in no rush to come.

Then they discovered that the immunity wanes.

It was only four months ago that they realized that the borders had to be opened."

"I had a player, Tom Abercrombie, a New Zealander, vaccinated, father of three children. In the pre-season he was injured when we were in Melbourne, and was sidelined for three months. He couldn't even go home to meet the family. And this is this season, while you in Israel have returned to normal life Absolutely. Basketball is played all over the world, and he can't fly from Melbourne to Auckland to see his family."

Will bring back Messina and Shamir to the Final Four of the Euroleague?

Kevin Pangos, left (Photo: GettyImages, Mitchell Layton)

Milan will aim to return to the Final Four this season after a year of absence.

Along with the remaining Shavon Shields, Niccolò Meli, Kyle Haynes, Gigi Datuma and Devon Hill, it landed Billy Barron and Brandon Davis, and is soon expected to announce the addition of Kevin Pangos and Johannes Vogtman from CSKA.

"We arrived in a somewhat precarious situation, when we lost 2:0 against Lokomotiv Kuban in the quarterfinals of the VTB.

The games before the Final Four are the most difficult and dangerous.

We had a good and disciplined game, and we led by 15 towards the end of the third quarter.

There were a lot of internal stories that affected us, but the bottom line was that we controlled the game as long as Aron Jackson played, and we lost control when he was injured."

"Listen, those weren't easy days. I saw Ettore very upset. It's hard to describe how the essence of CSKA in those years was entirely aimed at winning the Euroleague, and reaching the Final Four is simply not enough.

But two weeks later, out of that hole we had fallen into mentally and professionally, we ran to nine straight wins to erase the deficit against Kuban and also beat Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod to win the championship.

It was an achievement."

"The human mind remembers the bad things more than the good, the losses and not the titles. But I'm more rational than emotional, and maybe that's why I survive in the business. I don't think only about the miracles, but about what led to them. In 2004 there were a lot of other things that brought Lance followed by winning the Euroleague, and the same for what happened in 2014.

You can connect the dots and the people who were there.

From a historical point of view, a large part of the good things that happened to Maccabi are thanks to Pini Gershon and David Blatt.

The anecdotes were very critical, but I associate them with the work that was done and allowed these miracles to happen in the first place."

"Those were not easy days. I saw Ettore very upset. Getting to the Final Four just wasn't enough."

Tyrese Reyes celebrates the Milan miracle against CSKA in 2014 (Photo: GettyImages)

- Before you left for New Zealand, you coached Hapoel Holon, and now it is the national champion and a Final Four team in the Champions League.

"I have no part in this season of Holon, of course. It has been three years since I left, but places where you work for long periods of time enter your heart. They are a part of you. My parents worked in the same place all their lives, and I move from place to place, and get used to to connect and disconnect. What has been happening in recent years in Holon is a clear process that cannot be ignored. It is a place with a lot of character and soul, which has become very professional."

"I've been hurt many times, but I saw this incident too late. I got along with Shlomo, because we're on good terms, and I don't think he directed it at me. Maybe I'm naive, but he tried to say something true: 'I insisted that we stay in Europe and go through all These troubles'.

"When I coached Holon, and we started the journey in the Champions League, my focus was not on the European framework.

It was more important for me to be a top team in Israel.

I explained to the management that there would be difficulties, and losses, and we would be more exposed to injuries, and that we had to learn to live with it.

But for Shlomo, along with Eitan Lanziano and Roi Deborah, it was important.

Today this club is of a completely different size than it was five years ago, thanks to the success in Europe, and all the credit goes to these people."

"Another eight months, and I'm already looking forward to it very much. Both because of the interest it will probably create in Israel, and also because I will be able to come to Israel. It will be a long season, without the family. Even coming just for two days, it will be great fun."

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• Dan Shamir

• Ettore Messina

• Olympia Milan