Bartzokas: “Panathinaikos has been a master of paper warfare for years now”

Caustic against Panathinaikos appeared o George Bartzokas after defeat of Olympiakos (85-88). Asked if the surrounding atmosphere played a role in the team’s nervousness, he replied: “Panathinaikos has been a master (p.s. the question referred to a paper war) at this for many years now. We must not be influenced, we must play to our potential and play with confidence. We didn’t do it and I’m also responsible».

He added: “You expected something else to happen off the field. If there are objections in the match, it is in the spirit of the game. It’s not school sports, there are titles, money, premiums, careers and everyone should make excuses from us… Did you ask Mr. Ataman himself? This situation is not normal. These are the conditions, we have to play with them».

He said about the match in his initial statement: “Congratulations to Panathinaikos, they played a very good offensive game. It’s obvious that we didn’t manage the pressure of the stakes of the match, as a result of which we missed so many open shots, 13 shots, layups and made bad defensive decisions. We had to fill our racket and gave Panathinaikos easy baskets. We have to flip the switch mentally, hoping that we will all respond better mentally to the conditions of the game».

Of the attacking rhythm he has found, Nunn said: “He obviously played a role, had pace, scored critical baskets and made a lot of decisions».

Asked if there are similarities after the 2-2 draw with Barcelona, ​​he replied: “We’ll try to do our job, play the way we should, because today we weren’t good at many things. Even Grant’s three-pointer at the end of the half or Lessor’s basket and foul are typical. Defensively we weren’t good in the first half, we made the wrong rotations giving unnecessary assists, while we should have been better at rebounding and our tall guys should have defended better. If you don’t impose yourself mentally on the opponent, when he has attacking talent he will play with confidence. We had to lay the foundations earlier».

On whether Walkup had a problem and played a bit in the second half he said: “No, he didn’t have a problem. We trusted Gosh in ‘1’ and Kanaan in ‘2’. The problem was not so much Nan’s marking but what was happening when he entered the racket».

Regarding the fact that Olympiacos did not get many scores from the usual scorers, he said:When you’ve missed so many shots, so many open shots, you can say that anything that didn’t happen, couldn’t happen. In a point game you make some decisions based on each player’s experience, their performances… I wish we knew someone was going to miss shots, we would have taken them out earlier».