Basketball / Terrence Morris has been consistent this season, while Maccabi Tel Aviv has not
By Vered Cohen and Ofer Matan
Terrence Morris has had it. He does not have any more strength to hear that the Premier League championship is at risk, and that every league loss is a day of mourning; he is not interested in knowing about Siena's actions in the Italian league, and Maccabi Tel Aviv's fans have already stopped doing it.
The person who arrived at Yad Eliahu as a complementary player and turned into a 40-minute-per-game workhorse has no more energy for foreplay; he goes straight to the truth. Morris speaks about the Euroleague Final Four, which opens on Friday in Madrid, very seriously, and it is not clear whether he is craving the European title or just repulsed by the season that has been so demanding for him and so inconsistent for Maccabi Tel Aviv.
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These days he prefers to spend his time at his house, where nobody can bother him.
"Sometimes you just want to go to the beach, but you don't have any privacy; people chase after me," Morris says in an interview with Haaretz. "That's why I don't leave the house much and only to go to practice, watch television and talk to my friends in America."
While Morris has been cocooning himself in his apartment, the Euroleague has already anointed him the No. 2 defensive player of the season, and has even placed him on the list of candidates for the All-Euroleague squad. Morris is not excited, and primarily crystalizes the list of claims regarding what is being said around Maccabi.
"Everybody is making a big deal about the fact that we lost a few games in the Israeli league; so what?" he complains. "We know how much we're worth, so why does it matter what people are saying? We're still the same team that beat Real Madrid."
But what's happening to you in the Israel league?
"We haven't been consistent in the league, but that's all. The fact that they beat us by one point here and one point there does not mean that the opponents are better. We still know that we're one of the best teams in Europe; there's no need to prove it every second."
David Federman has said that it would be stupid not to fear for the fate of the championship?
"That's his response. Everybody thinks that the other teams are impressive, that they are better than us only because we're in second place. It really doesn't matter whether we get to the Israeli Final Four from first, second or fourth. The point is that we will be there and we will win. It's actually good to give the opponents hope that they are going to win the championship."
You, one of the consistent players this season, are actually in kind of a slump.
"At Nahariya I was tired and I felt heavy. I've played a lot of minutes throughout the season, and naturally it wears you down, but I don't see it as something serious."
Are you excited ahead of the Euroleague Final Four?
"This is my first Final Four, who wouldn't be excited?"
Siena [Maccabi Tel Aviv's opponent in Friday's semifinal] won by 57 points in its Italian league game this week.
"I don't care what they do and what the score was. We're not afraid of them; they are a regular team; they don't have LeBron James or someone like that. They are a good team, but so are we. We will try to beat them by 50 points. OK, that won't actually happen."
In any case, you'll win?
That is of course what we want. We've had a lot of ups and downs this season - Katash's departure, [Marcus] Fizer's injury, what happened with [Vonteego] Cummings and [Will] Bynum (who was arrested after he ran over someone with his car - V.C, O.M.). It has made us fighters."
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