JOR – Our first target is Turkey, Championship after that: Idais

TIANJIN (FIBA Asia Championship) - Ayman Idais played, to put in his own words, “his best game of the Championship” steering Jordan past Philippines into their maiden semifinal in the FIBA Asia Championships on Friday.

The 205-cm centre scored 13 of his game’s 20 points during the second quarter sparking a 10-0 run that took Jordan away from a dogged Philippines.

S Mageshwaran of FIBA Asia caught up with the 31-year-old after the game.

First semifinal entry for Jordan. Your initial thoughts?

It (the semifinal berth) basically shows nothing is impossible with hard work.

It’s the result of the hard work everybody in the team including coach (Mario Palma) has put over the last three years.

Obviously, it is exciting. And I think we have always deserved to be there. Only that we were struggling to translate our potential into performance.

Thank god, things are beginning to fall in place now.

Now that we are in the semifinals, we want to go all the way and take a shot at the Championship. Looking at the way we have played here, I don’t think it’s out of our reach.

We came here with qualifying (for the 2010 FIBA World Championship at Turkey) as our target. But now we are determined to give a shot at the title.

Can we talk about your game today? You were red hot in that second quarter.

In the first quarter they (Philippines) played real tight defence. I wasn’t getting open enough.

But in the second it began to fall in. And it was nothing unusual as far as I’m concerned. Just that those shots fell.

But more importantly, I am glad it helped the team to win in the end.

Did the way Philippines fight back in the fourth quarter scare you?

Seriously.

My mind was only thinking about that bad quarter we had against Japan which put us out of the semifinals last time.

But like I said that was two years ago.

The team has improved drastically in these two years. Our chemistry is a lot better and clicking.

Do you feel there are areas where Jordan can improve here?

Yes definitely.

We are surely playing some of the best basketball of our life. But let’s not forget this is a Championship. And we want to win it.

It’s a long tournament. We are very tired, but thankfully we are not dropping in our performance. That’s an achievement.

Of course we want to improve in our defence and defensive rebounds. That will be the key to our further progress here.

S Mageshwaran
FIBA Asia