Bartzokas: «We played far below what was expected from us»

Giorgos Bartzokas spoke at the post Greek Final Press Conference following our team's defeat to Panathinaikos. 

In his initial statement, our team's coach said: «First of all, we should congratulate Panathinaikos. They played a very good game and deserved to win the Cup. Our performance, individually, as a team, in terms of collaborations and focusing on the game plan, was much lesser to what was expected from us. Unfortunately, many things happened during this past week. Dorsey had to be absent for a few days and seemed to be out of place in the game, Milutinov suffered a fracture in his hand, Tyrique Jones had tendinitis and was not practicing, and Vezenkov got hurt during the game. All in all, we seemed pretty hesitant during the game. We were timid when shooting and had despicable percentages with threes, which is a very crucial factor since many of the threes we attempted were practically absolutely open. We committed many turnovers and took many bad defensive decisions, which led to Panathinaikos scoring with layups. We had the opportunity to use fouls in the close-out, without giving them bonus free-throws, but we instead let them get all the way into the paint. Our whole approach to the game was completely wrong given the critical meaning of such a final. So, we got what we deserved. We'll try to re-adjust our approach and be much better in our next game, although I do wonder if there's any worse performance than how we played tonight».