In his opening statement during the post-press, following game against Panionios for the 21st round of the Stoiximan GBL, Giorgos Bartzokas said:
“Sunday noon games here are always difficult. Panionios fights in every game and obviously, with Nenad on the bench, along with the addition of many high quality players they have made, they play with passion and clearly better. As you understand, we have a lack of motivation due to the fact that we are coming off a double week and we play again very difficult games on the upcoming Tuesday and Thursday. At the same time we have, truth be told, already secured first place in the Greek League. Nevertheless, I would like us to play for our team and for the credibility of the championship, but by putting in players who hadn’t even had a full team practice, such as Walkup, Vezenkov, Morris and Larentzakis, we obviously didn’t play well. We managed the game in such a way as to win it. There was a lot of nervousness, which came from our poor execution, from the mistakes we made - very cheap ones - and obviously from the surrounding atmosphere in the arena, which is always the same here and certainly affects us as people. When you hear this stream of abuse every time, it is a serious issue.”
When asked about Giannoulis Larentzakis and whether Olympiacos secured the win thanks to his “crazy” energy, Bartzokas said: “Larentzakis was very important. He played very well in the time he was on the court and helped us win. Personally, I’m not in favor of craziness, to be honest. Of course I want us to play with emotion, but we must be able to balance emotion and logic. Larentzakis often goes over the limit, but today he was very good. He executed the plan well, shot the ball well, played defense, and did what an Olympiacos player should do, because anyone who wears the Olympiacos jersey must play to win.”
