Bartzokas: «Winning in this court is important»
The coach of Olympiacos, Giorgos Bartzokas, was not fully satisfied with his players' performance against Aris, but acknowledged fatigue as a factor.
"Congratulations to our team. We have had a very heavy schedule. It included many trips and very difficult games in Spain. As you can understand, following something like that, motivation for the next game is not as strong. Aris however does not allow for relaxation since they play with great intensity, they fight for every possession on both ends of the floor and they go after every rebound... If I'm not mistaken, they have had 13 offensive rebounds in the first half. They usually create such intensity in the game that you have to be serious and pass the ball a lot. We have had 32 assists. If you go deep into the post with the ball, they attack the ball. We did most of what we had planned for. We were serious with our game for 35 minutes, the difference was 25 points and then we stopped playing for the last five minutes. It was wrong, but winning in the court where Panathinaikos lost is important. We must not forget that. I want to wish Aris good luck for what comes next"
Asked if he thinks he won players in the game, he replied: "Canaan is a good shooter. He has had good and bad moments. The sure thing is that he wants to adjusts to what the team wants. The team has very good rhythm since last season and each new player needs to enter this competition, which is not easy. Right now, the level of the team is high. You now how we rank in Europe and in Greece. It's not easy for a newcomer to enter this rotation. They are going to be having ups and downs with their perforamance, but obviously, we, as always, have patience and believe that through games and practice he will be reach the level he deserves to be playing at, because he's a very good player"
On whether Olympiacos' goal is to remain at this high performance level, he said: "To be honest, tonight no performance was exceptional. Sometimes you just have to manage and be understanding with your players. Following these trips and the intensity of the games, I for one feel exhausted. Think about how the players must be feeling. It's not just Olympiacos. All the teams of this level face problems with their national leagues. The main one being the motivation of the players. This season, our opponents have great motivation to play and they have time to prepare for these games. We, on the other hand, have only had time for half a practice session. We are not looking very far ahead and we are not talking about how we imagine the team to be in May. We are only trying to improve each passing day and go to the next game, which is very difficult for us. We don't have time to make long term plans. Our daily schedule is really demanding".