SAITAMA-- Spain has made a quantum leap.
No longer is it just a good basketball team. It's a great team. Credit coach Pepu Hernandez for orchestrating this change.
The team's 70-47 victory over Greek in Sunday's FIBA World Championship final was its 18th straight win, a sign of unity and consistency under Hernandez.
"Pepu expects his players to do what they are best at," said Carlos Jimenez, Spain's captain, in an interview with FIBA.com. "He doesn't expect anything else from you. I think this has been the key to our success.
"We have all contributed. Every player has brought out his best, and if you achieve this in a team, then there's no way your rivals can counter it."
In today's image-driven NBA, where shoe contracts often appear to be more important than the ability to hit mid-range jumpers with consistency, a team-first approach is sorely lacking. But at the World Championship the opposite proved to be true.
"We try to build this team (by) trying to show that everyone is important," Hernandez said. "Basketball is a game about passion, emotions, feelings and team."
What better illustration than this: Spain's players walked onto the court before Sunday's finale wearing T-shirts to honor their injured star, Pau Gasol.
The shirt had these words printed on them: Pau tambien juega (Pau also plays). Gasol didn't.
But his inspired teammates more than made up the difference.
"We are a team. We had Pau in our minds," point guard Jose Calderon told reporters.
Spain hosts EuroBasket 2007, where six of the top eight finishers at worlds, including France, Turkey, Lithuania and Germany, will vie for continental supremacy.