{"id":497758,"date":"2026-05-21T15:48:04","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T13:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/?p=497758"},"modified":"2026-05-21T15:48:04","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T13:48:04","slug":"jasikevicius-before-olympiacos-fenerbahce-at-the-start-we-had-to-rely-heavily-on-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/jasikevicius-before-olympiacos-fenerbahce-at-the-start-we-had-to-rely-heavily-on-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"Jasikevicius before Olympiacos-Fenerbahce: \u201cAt the start we had to rely heavily on defense\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-start=\"2042\" data-end=\"2325\">Sarunas Jasikevicius spoke in the press conference on the eve of the <strong data-start=\"2111\" data-end=\"2136\">EuroLeague Final Four<\/strong> semifinal between <strong data-start=\"2155\" data-end=\"2169\">Fenerbahce<\/strong> and <strong data-start=\"2174\" data-end=\"2188\">Olympiacos<\/strong>. The Lithuanian coach explained that his team\u2019s growth started from defensive consistency before improving on the offensive end as well.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2327\" data-end=\"2545\">\u00abAt the start of the season we had to rely heavily on defense. It always has to be the base of many things you are trying to build\u00bb.<br data-start=\"2459\" data-end=\"2462\" \/>\u00abWe improved offensively. I hope we will be able to show it on the court tomorrow\u00bb.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2547\" data-end=\"2890\">Jasikevicius also addressed his return to OAKA and the emotional angle of the night, but made it clear that the only thing that matters is the game itself.<br data-start=\"2702\" data-end=\"2705\" \/>\u00abIt is always nice to come to OAKA, it will be a little different from what I understand\u00bb.<br data-start=\"2795\" data-end=\"2798\" \/>\u00abWe are here to have a good 40 minutes and win the game. Everything else will be forgotten\u00bb.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2892\" data-end=\"3117\">The Fenerbahce coach also played down the discussion about whether winning as a coach is harder than winning as a player, bringing the focus back to daily work and to putting his team in the best possible position to succeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sarunas Jasikevicius previewed the Final Four semifinal against Olympiacos by pointing to defense as the foundation of Fenerbahce\u2019s season<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":489694,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[199],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-497758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-euroleague"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2026\/03\/Saras-Jasikevicius-.jpg","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497758"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=497758"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=497758"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=497758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}