The slogan of the counterattack was trumpeted by Ergin Ataman at the press conference, making a public commitment that if Panathinaikos AKTOR does not qualify for the Final Four, he will not be in the team next season.
Panathinaikos AKTOR lost Game 1 at home to Maccabi, but Ergin Ataman does not lose his faith in the team. The Turkish coach emphasized that he has promised to lead the greens to the Final Four and noted that if he does not succeed, he will not continue on the team’s bench, wanting to show how confident he is about the greens’ qualification in Berlin.
In detail what he said after the end of Game 1 with Maccabi Tel Aviv:
“I think we didn’t deserve to win tonight. We missed 10 shots. We had 1/7 threes from our power forwards. We made a lot of mistakes. We made a mistake on the last possession.
Everyone, the players, the club, the staff, the fans, we thought before the game that we would have a celebration here. We didn’t deserve to win. The refs gave Baldwin two ridiculous fouls for three shots. I complained that it is not fair, at the first such whistle. They said “warning for you” and I said “no the warning is for you” and got a technical penalty.
Everything was against us and we lost the game. We destroyed the work we had done for seven months in the regular season.
It didn’t matter that Panathinaikos had 5 years to be in the playoffs, because these players played 34 matches as if it was a final. The factors of defeat were the ones I mentioned earlier. Maybe the EuroLeague will punish me. Ok, let him punish me, but everyone saw those whistles. Those were the factors for me. Pressure; What pressure? We were under pressure in every match. We didn’t deserve to win and someone was against us.
I can’t do anything about missed shots. We’ve talked about mistakes. I think we are a much, much better team than Maccabi and 0-1 is not that important for us. We have to find our form and our game again.
What I want to say is that I promised everyone here that we were going to the Final Four. 0-1 is not important. We’re going to the Final Four. If we don’t go to the Final Four, I won’t be in Panathinaikos next year.”
