On the injury problems plaguing Olympiakos, he spoke George Bartzokas at the press conference after the defeat (90-85) of the “red and white” by Real Madrid.
The coach of Piraeus explained that it is difficult to deal with the “merenches” with these problems, while he noted that due to these injuries he doesn’t know what his team’s ceiling is.
From then on, Giorgos Bartzokas underlined the trust in his players.
It is also recalled that the Greek coach revealed that Nikola Milutinov will pass the door of the surgery on Saturday (27/1).
In detail, Giorgos Bartzokas spoke at the press conference about:
-the match: “Congratulations to Real and my friend Chus Mateo, he is playing very well as you know. It has great attacking players. He’s got Musa, Hezonia and of course Dek is back and he’s feeling great, he’s got short guys, he’s got tall guys, it’s really hard to deal with them especially right now with all the problems we’re having. We entered the first quarter without an assist, we tried to react and not act, especially in defense. Real can easily put up 30 points in one period and that’s what they did. We had no assists and ended up giving up 20 over the next three quarters. We had the chance to win, but two or three crucial attacks and two mistakes, two defensive rebounds that we lost, decided the match. Again congratulations to Real and my players for not giving up after the bad start. We are waiting for all our players back to see what we can do».
-if he is happy with his team’s reaction: “When you lose, you can’t be happy about anything. I trust my players, we have good players who have played great basketball in the last 2-3 years. This year is difficult because since the beginning of the year we have been missing so many, making it difficult to build our chemistry. One after another gets injured, we don’t know what our ceiling is. Milutinov will have surgery tomorrow and will be out for two months. We wanted to protect Nigel Williams-Goss tonight».
– Luke Sikma: “Luke Sikma played very well, he got 10 rebounds, while Papanikolaou made the connection in everything in defense and attack. What changed, in my opinion, the match was our fighting spirit. We said we had to play with pride. Even when you have problems, if you play with pride you can make up for a lot. In the last 2-3 years we have been fighting everywhere and this is very important for a team like Olympiacos».
Source: Sport Fm
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