Papanikolaou: “There’s no point in bemoaning our fate”

THE Olympic with a full medical report he is preparing for Tuesday’s game against the Alba Berlin in SEF, however the Kostas Papanikolaou he does not want to focus on the problems but on the solutions that his team is asked to find.

“To be honest, since the beginning of the year, we have done alchemy too many times. Unacceptable shapes to say it more correctly. But this is the situation we face. This is the reality we face. Moses, a child has come to help us. Let us also help him to join and feel more comfortable in the team and help from his side, as much as he can. We are slowly entering the final stretch, so there is no point in using excuses, nor bemoaning our fate for the situations we face. The essence is inside the parquet and there we have to cope and do our best“, he emphasized.

For playing with her Alba Berlin he said: “If you look at the whole Euroleague this year, Alba is a team that has beaten Barcelona and Reds in the last few matches. Two teams, one very competitive and the other in the high places of the league. So that in itself says something. It is a team, like all of the Euroleague and as the Euroleague is especially structured this year, that you cannot underestimate anyone, because you will find yourself on the bad side and we don’t want that. We have no room to be relaxed and take anything for granted. As I said, we are entering the final stretch and we must claim victory in every game».

As for the 110 match streak completed as… quintuplet in the Euroleague; “I would be interested if in 110 matches we had 110 wins. Nothing more. These are stats, which are nice to have somewhere in a column written down, but the essence of the thing plays no role and offers nothing to the team. To no one, if I have started, if I have not started, who is the top scorer, who is not the top scorer… I have said it thousands of times and I don’t want to be boring. The bottom line is that the team wins and we all succeed together. When we succeed, we are all happy and we all look good. When something goes wrong, we’re all failures and we’re all seen as bad, so to speak. This is the reality of the athlete and this is what championships are all about at the end of the day. So our job is to get on the floor and claim victory. Not everyone’s personal stats and for better or worse this is a situation that has been very prevalent in recent years. Not only in Europe, in sports in general. As if the individual statistics count more than the team statistics in a sport that is purely team and we should not rely only on this».