Ataman: “To be fair to ourselves, the vacancies with Maccabi are a surprise to me”

THE Panathinaikos welcomes on Friday night (26/10) the Baskonia in OAKA for the 5th matchday of the Euroleague, with the “greens” having as their only goal the victory that will put an end to the series of two defeats in the competition.

Speaking at the Media Day of the “greens”, Mr Ergin Ataman he spoke about the importance of tomorrow’s match, but also about the dangers that the game hides, despite the fact that the Basques are facing significant problems with injuries.

Afterwards, the Turkish coach of the “clover” revealed that Mandzoukas will be out due to the virus that is bothering him, while he did not hesitate to comment on the empty seats in the last game against Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Ergin Ataman’s statements in detail:



As for whether it is a must win game: “All games are must win, especially home games. We beat Bayern and lost two games in overtime. That’s how it is in every home game in every home match you have to win. You have an advantage but honestly we don’t if you look at what happened in the last game against Maccabi it shows that it doesn’t matter if you play at home or away. You just have to find a way to win. Baskonia is a dangerous team and maybe in these four games they have only one win but offensively they have players like Howard, Marinkovic, Moneke and Costello who take a lot of shots and a lot of threes. So the key will be defense.”

For the absences of Panathinaikos: “Mantzoukas is sick and I don’t think he will play. Papapetrou has had an operation. We don’t have anything else. But we have enough players and we will have to play aggressively and intelligently of course to treat ourselves fairly.”

On whether time is the new team’s ally: “We are a new team and every training session, every game is an opportunity to improve. The misfortune is the injuries we had at the beginning of the season. Mitoglou has played just one match in the Euroleague. Papapetrou also played one match and was good, but then he is absent for surgery. Slukas missed a match and even though he was not ready he played against Fenerbahce.

If we had a team that worked together for 2-3 years it would be easier to manage injuries. There are still things we don’t understand. We played a very good game on Monday and I want to believe that we will also be lucky, because against Olympiakos we made some mistakes, but against Maccabi these can only happen once in 100 years. The bad luck we had in the last 3-4 possessions. We know people are not happy but this team is a good team and as a new team they need even more support in these kinds of games because it’s the same to play against Barcelona, ​​Real and Maccabi but it’s different to play with Baskonia. And I hope we have people, because even in the previous game against Maccabi it was a surprise for me to see empty seats on the field. We need an atmosphere that puts pressure on the opposition and the referees and energizes us. It’s a big stadium, but I want it full. We lost 2 games, but from tomorrow we will start winning and it is important to have the people on our side”.