Jasikevicius: “We played individually and without a mind”

Sarounas Jasikevicius emphasized that the players of Panathinaikos deserve congratulations, he stood on only the good third quarter of Fenerbahce against the “greens”, he thinks that they played individually for the longest time and this is worrying, he stood up to the pressure of Panathinaikos and asked for unity, he waits slowly for the new players to join the team and asked for a better understanding from their bench.

In detail: “Congratulations to Panathinaikos and Ergin Ataman. We were very bad in the beginning and we were even worse spiritually. We weren’t united, we were more individual. We fought harder in the third quarter and I think we were better. We also improved in numbers, but we made childish mistakes and lost possessions. So we lost control of the match. The lack of team unity worries me more than losing the match, because when you are not united, you have no chance of winning.

Regarding the match, I thought why Panathinaikos can pressure us and why we can’t pressure them. As a team, they were always talking to each other and always communicating. We were like in separate units. Yes, we can make excuses like we are a new team and have a lot of new players, but unity is very important. We started to fight with a very different game in the third quarter, we weren’t perfect, we were fighting, that’s how we beat Anatolou Efes and Olympiakos. But, you can’t beat the previous champion that way unless you fight.

We are currently in a learning period as new players have joined the team. We have to adjust the players. If you look at Meli and Sanli, they were already ready, but Marjanovic and Birch are young. That’s why we may be a little behind. I don’t worry too much about the basketball details, those are things that can be worked out. I’m more concerned about being a team and not having a fighting spirit. These are more important.

Of course, we have to talk about them internally. It’s not just about doing some things when everything is going well. In fact, in the third and fourth quarters the team was together, they were talking to each other, but in the first two quarters everyone was in separate places and the people on the bench were in their own world.”