Dishing and diming with a Steppen Wolf

You can never really get tired of watching the best dishes and dimes, but one thing you may not realize is that the sweetest ones might come from places in the world you might not usually expect. For example, the steppes of Kazakhstan in Central Asia.

Enter Rustam Murzagaliev, the veteran point guard of the Kazakh national team, also known as the Steppen Wolves, who turned heads in the recent FIBA Assists of the Decade bracket by pulling off one of the major upsets in the lead up to the grand finale.



That underdog victory was claimed when Rustam Murzagaliev's over-the-head pass beat out former NBA MVP Derrick Rose's touch pass in the Quarter-Finals.

"First of all, it was a great honor for me to be in this competition," Murzagaliev expressed. "Eliminating Derrick Rose out of the race was doubly joyful!"

Though the savvy Kazakhstan point guard was quick and obvious in celebrating his victory, he was also swift to show his respect for Team USA's star.

"I'm a big fan of Derrick and I really like his performance! I wish him the best and I hope will win a title in the near future."

For now though, Rose will have to settle for being the guy that lost to Murzagaliev in this Assist of the Decade contest. Honestly, there's no shame in losing out this battle either as Murzagaliev himself is a very solid point guard in his own right and has starred as the floor general for the Steppen Wolves in Asia for many years. The 28-year-old takes pride in his role as a facilitator and doesn't mind that he isn't the one that racks up the points for his team.
 

"For me, as a point guard, it is certainly more pleasant to give a good pass to a teammate rather than to score myself. I think any basketball player playing point guard would agree with me."

"The pass was good, but the most important thing was that my teammate scored on the basket and I was very happy about that!"

Murzagaliev describing the pass as "good" might be underselling the aesthetics of the dime drop just a bit. There's a reason that his pass made it to the Semi-Finals of the contest.

"When the ball was picked up by the opponent, I knocked the ball out of his hands," Murzagaliev recalls. "The ball began to fall behind his back and it was at that moment, I saw my teammate open under the basket in the corner of my eye."

"I knocked the ball towards myself and the basket was still at my back. There was nothing that I could do but make the pass over my head."

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