Riders raise Championship trophy with win over Wildcats
“Happiness, joy, relief – speechlessness once again, second time this season. It’s a rare thing but twice in one season, I mean, wow. It’s amazing to win it in front of the home fans, they’ve deserved this. It’s been a long time coming, especially for the owner, Kevin Routledge, for Russell (Levenston, co-owner), Rob Paternostro, everybody has worked so hard for this day and I’m glad it’s finally paid off.” – Leicester Riders captain, Barry Lamble.
“I think it’s believing in your team-mates, it’s about having respect for your team-mates from the youngest to the oldest regardless and listening to what they’ve got to say and listening to what the coach has got to say and putting it all in the same pot and making a great cake from it.” – Yorick Williams.
“Tonight is significant for the fact that we won the league but also, just looking at the crowd in here – y’know, when we first arrived, there was a lot of empty seats and now, you couldn’t find a seat in here and it’s been like that for the last six months and I think that’s what’s special, not just for us as a basketball team but us as a professional club.” – Coach Rob Paternostro.
The biggest game in Leicester Riders history had the fairytale ending that it so rightly deserved, as they beat the Durham Wildcats 93-70 in front of a sold-out John Sandford Sports Centre to seal their first ever BBL Championship title win. It was the second piece of silverware for the 2012/13 Leicester Riders having already picked up the BBL Cup earlier in the season.
At the final buzzer, while the players hugged and wore smiles that lit up the night sky, away from the on-court celebrations, Coach Paternostro fell back onto his game-time chair and spoke in tired, but grateful tones about the enormity of Saturday night’s victory.
“Starting five seasons ago, what we wanted to do is become a difficult team to play every night. That was the goal. We didn’t talk about winning trophies and winning championships. We wanted people, when they played the Riders to know that it wasn’t going to be the same old Riders any more. Each year we’ve built on that and obviously some years you get better breaks and some years you don’t but over the five seasons, we have consistently been a difficult team to play and to be sitting here at the top of the mountain now is really good because there’s so many players throughout the years that have contributed to where we are now.
“Talk about this team and this team is wonderful and I love this team. But I also love all my players that have played for me and they also should get a mention for where we are today.”
Although reluctant to single particular players out for their efforts, when asked about Yorick Williams’ 2012/13 journey from starting the season unsigned to providing support from a reserve role as the Riders claimed their first, and Williams’ second, Championship title, Paternostro was forthcoming.
“The last month he’s been fantastic,” said Paternostro of the 17-year BBL veteran. “Yorick is the kind of player who is ready when he’s called upon and even if he’s not called upon, he makes an impact on the game. And over the last month with this crazy fixture list that we’ve had, he was able to step up and be a valued contributor on both ends of the floor.”
For Williams, the feeling was mutual.
“With me and Rob, we’ve got a great camaraderie where we can speak and he’ll listen, I’ll listen. I’m the soldier, he’s the coach. At the end of the day, he’s a great person to listen to every player and take on board what they’ve got to say.”
The Leicester Riders reward for a title run as well as two Cup Final appearances was to play six games in 11 days – a gruelling period that took it’s toll on the squad both mentally and physically in the lead-up to the title-deciding game against the Wildcats. Starters, Losonsky and Taylor were given late clearance to play yesterday having both been restricted to watching from the sidelines in recent weeks after failing to find time to recover from their respective injuries.
“I hope the league will sit down and look at it. And not look at it and say ‘well, they won the game so it’s right’, because it’s not right,” said a weary Paternostro. “If you’re going to play the league a certain way in the other months, you have to be consistent with that the rest of the season. We felt very hard done by by that schedule.
”But what we talked about was because of that (six games in 11 days), it’s time for us to say ‘So what? We’re still good enough to get through it’. It makes it more special in some ways that we were given that fixture list and we were able to battle through it and go undefeated and still be standing at the top.
”We were really excited looking at the lay-up lines tonight. Mark, Phil and myself looked at it and said ‘we like when this team is all together and we don’t have the injuries’. It gives us so much balance and so much versatility. When we have all our players, we can do so many different things.
“But, let’s give a mention to the guys who have filled in admirably: Jamell Anderson has had to play more minutes, Calvo, Connor Washington, Yorick Williams, Barry Lamble; I think all of them deserve recognition. A lot of times when you win these things, it’s the star players you talk about but with our team I think you can talk about all of them.”
Great Britain captain, Drew Sullivan, agreed: “I’ve been lucky enough to win in this league and I’ve always been around really good players. I couldn’t win as many trophies or titles as I have by myself. For all the guys I’ve played with over the years, I’ve got to give them a lot of credit.”
Team harmony and chemistry have always been the hallmark of a Paternosto side – just take the 2011/12 team who finished second in the league, electrified fans with their interchangeable skill-sets and Play-off Final appearance. Last season’s team was star-studded but fell short. So what took this squad over the edge?
“Our defence, from the minute we walked into practice until now, has been tremendous,” Paternostro said. “Our versatility on the defensive end is as good as it gets and when you have that type of defence, you can overcome bad shooting nights and things that don’t go well for you offensively. To be sitting here now at 27-2 in this league is a lot to do with our defence.”
Paternostro’s admiration of his current crop of BBL stars was clear as he continued, moving on to talk about the squad-wide attitude that left the fifth-year BBL coach stunned.
“It’s real easy for people to say ‘they have a lot of depth, so that’s why (they’re successful)’ and yeah, we have a lot of depth and players that accept their roles. If you have depth and players that don’t accept their roles then depth can be counterproductive but it’s our guys from the beginning who have accepted their roles and if one night it’s not their night to get big minutes, they know the next night it might be. And I swear to you, I’ve had nobody throughout the season complain about minutes, complain about shots, complain about touches. Over a six month, seven month period of professional basketball, that’s unheard of.”
Durham Wildcats coach, Dave Elderkin, who saw his side’s play-off battle end with defeat to the Riders, was delighted to have been able to see, first hand, the success of the league’s oldest franchise.
“It was a pleasure to be involved in a game where a club has worked so hard over 38 years to win a championship they thoroughly deserved.
“The one thing I want to take credit for from my team is that we never stopped playing against a very, very good team tonight.”
Coach Elderkin’s side were unfortunate to face the Riders in a game with so much on the line but the Wildcats played hard from start-to-finish and showed that despite their second-from-bottom position in the league, there are promising times ahead for the North East club.
But the night belonged to the Leicester Riders, winners of the 2012/13 BBL Cup and after so many years of hard knocks and close calls, the league’s oldest club can now call itself the league’s newest champions.