Ergin Ataman spoke at the press conference and referred to Panathinaikos’ attempt to reach the Final 4.
THE Panathinaikos AKTOR welcomed her Maccabi Tel Aviv in the OAKA for the first match of the series Play Offsin a game where the guests, despite the fact that they were even at -12, did not give up and were able to take the victory with 91-87making it 1-0.
The “clover” coach, Ergin Atamanduring the press conference, argued that his team did not deserve the victory today while also referring to the effort to qualify for the Final Four.
“We will go to the Final Four and if we don’t, I won’t be in Panathinaikos next year”
“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. If we don’t go to the Final Four, I won’t be in Panathinaikos next year.”
