The season of the 2021-2022 back-to-bacl Turkish Airlines EuroLeague champions has been a wild ride. With 10 games to go in the regular season they were plagued by injuries and were standing in 16th place in the standings.
Head coach Erdam Can was replaced by assistant coach of 10 years Tomislav Mijatovic and just like that, Efes started to re-build itself in record time.
"I am saying this without any kind of over-exaggeration," Mijatovic assures. "Efes is a home. When you feel a sense of belonging and ownership of the situation, you feel that much more personal pressure on yourself to try to do everything in your power to be succesful."
With eight wins in 10 games, Mijatovic led Efes to its final ninth place and a berth in the Play-IN Showdown that could earn the Turkish team another trip t the playoffs.
"He just asked us to be positive and to believe," Efes star Shane Larkin says. "We just kind of came together as a group."
Now Efes has to play against Virtus Segafredo Bologna in its first step of the Play-in phase. If the Istanbul team wins, it will face the loser of the other Play-in game between Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv and Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz. A win in that second game would pit Efes against top seeded Real Madrid in a best-of-five playoff series for a spot in the Berlin Final Four in May.