Bartzokas: «It was a very important win» (vid)

Giorgos Bartzokas gave credit to his players for the win against Efes, but he had already turned his focus on the upcoming derby against Panathinaikos.

“This was a serious performance by our team, we trained our focus on Larkin, Beaubois and Thompson defense wise, on all the great guards on Efes’ roster. They scored 25 points in the first part and a total of 57 at the end. We succeeded in moving the ball a little more in the second part, we put all our players on the floor in the game, they made decisions and they scored. We got a win that we think as a very important one and we now have to focused on the next game for the Basket League. Good luck to Efes and to coach Erdem Can.”

On whether the win of the football team (i.e vs West Ham) put extra pressure on him and his players, he said: “No, Everyone was happy about it. We watched the game as far as we could. We obviously wanted to remain focused on our game as well. I think that the fans that came to the gym after the game at the Karaiskakis football stadium, together with everyone that was already here, created a unique atmosphere for one more time. The game was sold out. I think that are games are a festivity. We are going to be winning and we are going to be losing, but we are always going to be trying to play up to standards for our team and we’ll see at the end where that takes us”.  

Talking about giving minutes to the players, he pointed out: “The fact that we have minutes to all is important. Walkup had a tightened muscle in his lower back and the fact that he only played 21 minutes is important. Everyone who played at the perimeter were very good in both facilitation and execution”.

YOU CAN WATCH THE FULL PRESS CONFERENCE IN THE VIDEO THAT FOLLOWS