Bartzokas: “The players we got are champions – Let’s play for our shirt”

The… basketball season officially begins in Hellaswith the jamball taking place in Rhodes for the Super Cup (29-30/9), where Panathinaikos, Olympiacos, PAOK and Peristeri bwin they will claim the first title of the year.

THE George Bartzokas spoke at the press conference about the difficult preparation of the “red and whites”, however, he was optimistic about the development of the season and called the new players acquired “champions”.

In detail what he said:

“I don’t know about the start of the season, as we had a difficult preparation, but sooner or later we will show on the field our skills, which are high. We had a lot of internationals and some injuries, the form of the players is at different levels. Little by little we will find our chemistry, I am happy with the set we have. We lost some important players like Sasha and Kostas, but the new players we got have a good mentality and I think they are champions. Let’s play for our shirt and go as far as possible. We all want to win every title but only one does. We must have a strong stomach to withstand the pressure from the media and the world. Pressure is synonymous with sportsmanship and competitiveness”

We know very well how Panathinaikos plays and Panathinaikos knows very well how we play. To play each other, we will have to win in the semi-finals. Peristeri bwin is a very good team. If we end up playing Panathinaikos, I don’t think any team will try to hide anything. We are going to compete in every game. All teams at the beginning of a year have great room for improvement.

We have a number of players who are behind compared to others because they have had injury issues or came later. We have until tomorrow (29/9) at 10:00 to decide on the roster, we will try to make a puzzle of players who are most competitively ready.

The successes of my team in previous years played an important role so that there is interest in Greek basketball, Panathinaikos invested too much money in fact to compete with us. This will slowly attract the rest of the teams, basketball is being reformed, I also see good coaches like Spanoulis and Takianos and in general I think we helped a lot in this. If we lose a title or if we win someone else, we will be here, I had big failures too but I survived.”