Ataman on Sluka: “Every time there was a difficulty I called him from the bench – One of the best players in the Euroleague”

Only a few hours remain for the Final 4 in Berlin, where the Panathinaikos AKTOR will face Fenerbahce in the semi-final with the aim of winning and qualifying for the grand final of the Euroleague.

The coach of the “greens”, Ergin Atamanhosted at NOVA, deifying once again the leader of the “clover”, Kostas Sloukasmentioning, among other things, that when he saw the “dark” he immediately threw him into the “battle”, having complete trust in him!

At the same time, the Turkish technician also referred to semi-final with Fenerbut also in his speech during the playoffs with Maccabi, how if he is banned, he will leave Panathinaikos!

Ergin Ataman’s statements in detail:



For the advantage against Fenerbahçe: “I think we are a very good defensive team, we had the best defense in the Euroleague during the season. When it’s a knockout game the defense is always like…the duck, it always has two with it, it has company! The attack is like the cat, sometimes you can lose it! There’s no time in a final 4 semi-final for that, it’s only one game, so I think our defense is our strength against Fenerbahce.”

On the defeat in the first game of the play offs by Maccabi: “Sometimes being overconfident is very dangerous. In this first game no one thought we would lose. I didn’t think so either, because we won every game at home in the second half of the regular season. And in the game though, I didn’t think at any point in the game that we were going to lose. We were 10 points ahead in the last quarter. Something went wrong in those last 6-7 minutes, we panicked, we made mistakes and we made mistakes from the bench in how we dealt with Colson who made two very crucial shots, one in front of our bench. We faced all this with a… delay, we made some mistakes, I won’t talk about the rest of the mistakes because I’m already one of the sponsors of the Euroleague.. It was unacceptable the way we lost but we never lost our confidence”.

On “if I don’t make it to the Final Four, I’ll quit” he said: “To stop the shock we had all suffered, I had to give another shock! For the team, for the players, for the fans, for you journalists! You love it when we do it! And I did it to tell everybody, ‘don’t worry, we lost the first game but we’re going to make the playoffs and go to the Final Four.’ And you know that I like Athens very much, every day I’m at the beach, I swim, I don’t want to leave, but I took a risk and I won!

For the possibility of a Greek civil war in the final: “Yes! Olympiacos did a great job to beat Barcelona. To be honest, even when I talk to my friends the team I wanted to win is Olympiacos. Because coach Bartzokas has built a very good system in the past years, this team is always tough on the field. They manage their attacks very well, they are a very disciplined team. They are two different groups, very different. I think Real is a team that has depth in their attack with players like Campacho, Hezonia, Moussa and Tavares, but Olympiacos is a tougher team, they play with more aggression, it will be a very difficult game. It’s hard to make predictions, I saw that Real Madrid is the team they believe the most in this final four but I don’t think Olympiacos will give them the ticket to the final so easily and for me it’s 50-50.”

For Kostas Sloukas: “Slukas is one of the best players in the Euroleague. And I believed it all the previous years when he was on the other side and played against me in Fenerbahce and Olympiakos. All I did is I had the confidence to let him play. Several games in the season he started off the bench as the 6th out. But every time there was a difficulty we would say “come on Kostas”, and he would come in and organize the attack as it should be. This year he improved his defense as well, he is the leader of this team and he has that role because we may have very good players in our team, but we only have two who have experience in the final four. And he certainly understood during the playoffs that he has to fight and play. In the first game of the series, let’s say, he played very well, but he made a big mistake at the end and we lost. In the second game, however, he had the game of his career. He was amazing in here and showed that when Kostas Slukas is fit physically he can really make a difference in all areas. In many games he played a lot…34-35 minutes, I think sometimes he is maybe tired but I think he is happy…see him now he takes his coffee and he likes to play so much he doesn’t complain!