Bartzokas: «A huge thank you to the fans» (vid)
Giorgos Bartzokas expressed the need for his team to leave the loss to Monaco behind the soonest possible, and did not omit to thank the fans that stayed at the arena to cheer for him and his players.
“It was a game the way we had expected it to be. A close and physical one. Monaco is an athletic team that pays a physical game and we had to match up this condition, which we totally did not. We allowed James and Okobo to feel comfortable on the floor and score more than forty points. It was not a good night tonight, we have to move on and learn our lesson about what happened. Just like I have said before, sometimes we are going to be winning, others not. This is how the Euroleague is. Each game is a different story. If you relax even a little, if you let your emotions take over, which we did tonight, since due to the fans presence we tried to go above ourselves in some aspects, then you’re going to have a problem. Instead of playing a simple game and for the extra pass, many players let their emotions carry them away. But, that’s the Euroleague. You lose, you win, you forget about it and go to the next game”.
“After the end of the game, thousands of our team’s fans remained in their seats and sang non-stop for the ‘red & whites’! This alone is exceptional, especially in the country we live in”, the coach commented. “It is obvious that the fans appreciate the team’s effort, we played well for quite some time, we always play with all we’ve got and they realized that we did not play as we should have tonight, but we tried, even though probably in the wrong direction. I just sincerely want to thank the fans. I’m grateful, but it does not make my job any easier. My job is hard, one way or the other. We are simply not changing our plan. We are going to get ready for the next game and that’s it”.
On his part, Monaco’s coach, Sasha Obradovic, pointed out: “Congratulations to both teams, but especially to mine for taking a big win in this arena. Olympiacos has been playing great basketball. I could say that tonight’s game was a huge theft. For us, the beginning had been very hard, with four away games in a row. We are now looking ahead to a better schedule and our goal is to protect our home court. That’s what makes our win even bigger. As for the game, we began kind of careless and did not play as I had wanted us to. In the second part, we continued playing as if not believing we had a chance at winning. But, we upped our intensity in defense and moved the ball better in offense. We found open shots, James and Okobo had been amazing tonight and a lot of our players also offered solutions.”