Dairis Bertāns about Timma: I’m not really surprised

The captain of the Latvian basketball team Dairis Bertāns will not be surprised by the decision of his colleague Jānis Timmas to represent the team in the Russian 3×3 league.

Competition show

“It’s not appropriate at the moment, it’s a choice, it can’t get into his head and we can’t do anything. It’s difficult. It wasn’t a big surprise to me,” said Dairis Bertāns to “Latvijas Avīze”, who are currently unable to help the team “VEF Riga” due to injury.

“VEF” came to 32-year-old Timma back in October, and “Zeļli” in Riga gave him the opportunity to get playing practice, but he chose now not to play big basketball, but to play in the funny project 3×3 in Russia. The name is “Liga stavok media basket” and it has little to do with ordinary sports, rather it is called an entertainment and exhibition event. The competition will take place for a month and a half in October and November, 16 teams will participate. Jānis Timma‘s “Team Alikson” is in sixth place after three rounds. The games are played on two baskets, the size of the field is 20 meters, the team has three players on the field at the same time, but more than ten players can apply for a game, including women.

A player of Timma’s level can hardly get a decent salary there, and there is very little chance that playing in such a company can be an intermediate level to show himself to a professional classic basketball team.

Russian sports are still swimming in money. The six strongest basketball teams in the VTB League have five to six foreigners each, most of them Americans. Nasirs Bruks, who helped “VEF Rīga” become champions in Latvia last spring, will play in Samara. He was described as a great intellectual, visiting museums, tattooing the Latvian flag on his leg. To introduce the Russian turmoil a year later…

It should be noted that Latvian hockey goalkeeper “intellectual” Jānis Kalniņš, who played for Khabarovsk “Amur” for the previous two seasons, is without a club this season. The striker Nikolay Yeliseyev, who represented Vladivostok “Admiral” after the war, is also unemployed. He hoped for a contract in Sochi this summer. Leonid Tambiyev is the head coach in Vladivostok for the fourth season, helping “sancho pans” Andrey Banad, while Viktor Ignatiev is an assistant in the Chinese club playing against the Russians.

Smoking in the stands

In the third game of the FIBA ​​Champions League, “VEF Riga” lost 69:80 at home to “AEK” from Athens, who was personally supported by a large and very active group of twelve fans. This is probably the first time, or certainly one of the very rare times, when a fan calmly smokes in the stands during a game – apparently in Greece and here and the that in the south, the Balkan countries have a different culture.

The visiting basketball players dominated the game, the home team managed to maintain their composure with several good cuts until the middle of the third quarter.

but then in four out of five events, lack of attention and control, two technical notes (three players in total – Mārtiņš Gulbi, Māris Gulbi and Rihards Berkolds) failed and the Greeks bit the hook.

Harrison Cleary led the home team’s offense with 19 points, making four of five long-range shots, but Georgian point guard Rati Andronikashvili looked heavy, with six points and six fouls in 24 minutes. He is currently being invited to help for three weeks. The Latvian champions have also made an offer to Jānis Strēlnieks, who is currently without a club, but he chose to wait for something more likely in a stronger league.

“We didn’t fully deserve the victory, this is not the way to play basketball, 20 mistakes, the opponents have good players, but we didn’t change,” he said to his disappointment head coach “VEF Riga” Mārtiņš Gulbis. “At one point it seemed like a free throw competition, we are a fast team, but all the time we have to look at it as [viesi] throwing a penalty. That “AEK” style.

Thanks to the viewers [4355]but I don’t know who was happy to see this game. We don’t remember one combination five times.”

Lithuanian Mindaugs Kuzminsks was the most productive player in “AEK” with 19 points (free throws 14/13), who admitted with a smile that he feels at home in Riga, still remembering on his trembling legs in the first adult basketball game in “Arena Riga” in 2007 against “Sakala” “in the ranks against “Baron”. The 35-year-old veteran responded thanks to journalists Latvia in Lithuania: thank you “VEF Riga” captain Dairis Bertāns is said to be one of his best friends.

Vefiņas has one win in three games, “AEK” is 2-1, on November 13, both teams will compete in Athens.