On a night when Nikola Milutinov and Alexey Shved got all the headlines, CSKA Moscow’s acting head coach Andreas Pistolis went out of his way to talk about two other players in the team’s 91-72 victory over ALBA Berlin.
CSKA's Clyburn and Bolomboy singled out for sacrifice

The CSKA assistant coach was filling in for head coach Dimitris Itoudis, who could not be on hand due to a health issue. And Pistolis's job was much easier because of the outstanding showings of Milutinov and Shved, who both had double-doubles with 21 points and 11 rebounds and 10 points and 13 assists, respectively.
Still, Pistolis made sure to talk about Will Clyburn and Joel Bolomboy in both the post-game broadcast interview and the post-game press conference.
“Even though I don’t want to single out individuals, I really want to congratulate a little bit extra Will Clyburn and Joel Bolomboy, who played through immense pain and sacrificed themselves for the team. And that is really important for us,” he said directly after the game.
And at the press conference he continued by saying: “This is the kind of spirit that we need in this team. We appreciate their sacrifice.”
No specifics were given about the players’ injuries but both made an impact on the game.
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Clyburn buried 2 three-pointers in the first quarter and added another basket in the second quarter as ALBA was trying to fight back into the game. All told, Clyburn picked up 8 points on 3-for-7 shooting to go with 1 rebound and 1 assist for a performance index rating of 6 in 14:34 minutes.
Considering the pain issue he was dealing with, Clyburn’s performance was big as Pistolis looked for the whole team to score.
Bolomboy played even fewer minutes, but he helped not give any relief to ALBA when Milutinov was on the bench. Bolomboy came up with a big three-point play to close the first half and he opened the fourth quarter with the first 2 points. All told, the center tallied 5 points and 2 rebounds for a PIR of 6 in 7:35 minutes.
Those might not be the biggest numbers, but sometimes the silent efforts mean just as much.