Bartzokas: «We must keep fighting» (vid)

The coach of Olympiacos, Giorgos Bartzokas, pinpointed the terrible second-quarter performance by the ‘red & whites’ in combination with the injury of Nikola Milutinov, following the loss to Baskonia.  

“It is obviously a painful loss for our team. However, it’s something we cannot change. We should have done the right things at the end of the game. We turned the ball over twice and received one block. We should have made better decisions at that time. We did not use the foul we had available, since we weren’t yet in the bonus zone and of course, McIntyre’s shot that decided the game, despite being guarded, were crucial. This is the second Euroleague game we lose at the last possession. We must hold our heads high, continue fighting and stay together. I’d like to say something about Nikola Milutinov, that no one knows. He broke a toe three days ago and played after having had an injection to control the pain. It is only natural that with a broken bone, he could not continue playing more than three minutes”.  

And continued adding: “What we definitely did wrong, is the second quarter. We made a lot of wrong decisions on offense during that time, we tried to score without passing the ball. We fell for Baskonia’s trap, we scored an easy 26 points in the first quarter and thought that we could all score. The second quarter was a disaster for us. Bad decision making on offense, allowed them to run the fast-break, take easy shots and for their shooter to gain confidence. We returned to our standard game in the second half. We led twice before the end, but I explained before what cost us the game”.  

On his part, the coach of the Spanish team, Dusko Ivanovic, said: “It was a very important win for us in a very difficult game. We paid a lot of respect to Olympiacos at first, but after they got to lead, we played better. We were lucky at the end with McIntyre’s shot and I hope that this gives him confidence to play even better in the future”.  

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