Mike Batiste was the best player on the court in a rather strange game for Panathinaikos. The “greens” won against Unicaja Malaga in overtime (103-95), after losing an advantage of 22 points. The victory gave to the “clover” the home advantage for the Euroleague play offs, against Montepaschi Siena. Batiste set a personal record in ranking (35). He scored 22 points (9/10 2pts), he grabbed 9 rebounds, he had no turnovers.
The reason for his performance was simple for him. Malaga can blame partly Partizan for it: “I just wanted to be aggressive personally because in the last game I didn’t score anything. As a team we played bad, but also personally I played bad and I am my own worst critic even when I play good. Today I just wanted to be more aggressive and to do the things necessary for my team to win and take the first position. Scoring, rebound whatever I have to do to help my team and this is what I did today”.
The feeling of getting from plus 22 points to minus 1 was not that good for Batiste: “I felt very bad. We did relax a little bit, but also we did fight. When the offense is not going as good as you expect to be and they are making shots it’s difficult. I mean 17 3pointers is kind of unbelievable. They hit a lot of tough shots. That’s why we said this game was going to be difficult. We knew they were coming and not playing for anything and they were going to shoot, shoot, shoot. Obviously, or unfortunately they got the rhythm of it”.
Panathinaikos kept playing and fighting, although the home court advantage was sealed earlier in Italy , where Roma beat Partizan: “We didn’t know about that result. Regardless of what Partizan did against Roma, we just wanted to win and we did. It was a very difficult game. I am just happy that we put it out like this”.
Now Montepaschi Siena gets on the way of Panathinaikos one more time. Batiste has no illusions about that series of games: “It’s going to be difficult. We cannot play against Siena the way we played against Unicaja Malaga. They are a very experienced team a team that fights for 40, 45, 50 minutes if they have to. We have to be ready for a battle. Home court advantage really doesn’t mean anything. We‘ve been victim of this against Tau, so we know the downfalls on this. As long as we play hard and we take advantage of the opportunity and the situation we’ll be good, because these opportunities do not come by often to go to the final four. This is another motivation for us”.
The home court advantage is a given for Panathinaikos. What does it mean? “Anytime you have the home court advantage in a best of five series, in front of your fans it’s a big help for us. We’ll see. We’ll have our fans next to us, but we have to play for 40 minutes in each game”.
