Dwayne Bacon: "I wouldn't be able to get individual awards without my teammates"

Blue-whites forward Dwayne Bacon shared his emotions in an interview with Zenit TV after receiving the MVP award for the 2024/25 VTB United League regular season. He also commented on the victory over Lokomotiv Kuban (93:80) in Game 5 of the semifinal series. In the recent match, Bacon recorded 30 points, 5 rebounds and 3 assists.

— Dwayne congrats on the win. Zenit leads now 3-2 in the series. Are you satisfied with the team result tonight?

— Yeah, I mean a win is a win. We took it, but we still got to go there and get another one.

— What was the key moment tonight?

— We finally out rebound them. It took us five games to finally out rebound them. And that was a big step and we defended, we helped each other. You know, at times they're going to make tough shots, they work as hard as we do. But at the end of the day we were able to sustain it. We had a lead similar to that fourth quarter last game and they ended up making a run and coming back. But today we were able to hold it off.

— You were named the VTB United League MVP of the regular season. It's your third award during this season. What does it mean for you?

— It's an accomplishment to testify to all the hard work I put in in the summer, all the hard work I put in all season, being here in Zenit, and it kind of means a lot because it's my first real MVP award since I've been overseas. I'm just happy it could be here. These guys accepted me. They allow me to be myself and I'm happy that I can bring what I'm able to do on the basketball court to St. Petersburg. Hopefully we can continue to win and build from here and get a championship.

— Was this award one of your goals before this season?

— I mean the main goal is always a championship. Anytime you get individual awards it's cool but I wouldn't be able to get it without my teammates like I said. So, I extremely you know thank those guys just for allowing me to be me. But my main goal is to win a championship.

— You and Trent had hot hands tonight and you combined more than 50 points together. Is team chemistry working?

— Yeah, me and Trent have lot of talks. We need to win these big games. That team, they have players that are capable of scoring big points at any given time. We were able to come out and sustain our play the whole night and that's what we got to do from here on out.

— Xavi Pascual now has 300 official games for Zenit. What do you think about this milestone?

— That's big. I mean he's been here 10 years. So that's big.

— It was sold out tonight. What can you say about the fans?

— They always help. It's a packhouse. They were loud tonight. They were helpful. You know and that's what we need anytime when we play home. I mean you know the goal is to win every game, but at least when we're home we got to make sure take care of home court advantage. Just to show the appreciation to the fans for being here.

— What do we need to improve to win in Krasnodar?

— We got to stop their fast breaks. We got to continue to out rebound them and to play defense. At the end of the day if we don't defend and play the right way we won't win. But you know we showed that we're capable last game into the fourth quarter and we showed we were capable this game all four quarters. That's what we got to take the same mentality that we had today into the next game. And hopefully, you gotta be able to, you know, go out there and leave it all on the floor and live with the results. And that's what I did tonight. And thankfully we came out with a win. Next game, that's what the team just gotta do. We gotta go out there and play our hardest, know that we're playing our hardest and leave it all on the floor. And if we do that, we'll win.