Zeljko Obradovic received the victory across from Olimpija positively but did not refrain from focusing on the turnovers committed but also the crowd’s presence and its own method of reacting to all taking place on court from the fans’ stands post.
“I would sooner repeat what I stated yesterday at the press conference. I had pointed out that Olimpija is a great team, a fact it more than offered proof for today. We have seen many of its games and we knew its potential. We saw how satisfying it competed this evening. And the only easy thing to say is that we were very lucky. But it was similar to the first game at Ljubljana, were we lost in the OT even though we had the opportunity to win. A very important element is that we did not have much energy in offense. And, according to the way they faced us in defense we could have penetrated more. They gave us lots of room and we could have played our game. Another important fact was the 18 offensive rebounds we gathered. It was what aided us towards prevailing. During practice we instruct our players towards the necessity of gaining more possessions than our opponents. This happened today. And we must continue to do so. On the other hand we had many turnovers but thankfully so did Olimpija (20/23). How we managed to turn the tables on Olimpija in the game is entirely up to Diamantidis who read into the defenses and scored I don’t even know how many points in the end”.
Next, Coach Obradovic referred to the fans: “Congratulations to the players who found the way to win the game, congratulations to our fans, that helped us, but honestly the atmosphere is not even close to the stifling atmosphere we aspire towards and which we experience at the road games. My wish it that in the next games we will have more passion demonstrated in the fans’ stands. Only together with our fans can we make ultimately make it. Today, we must not focus on what happened in the last minute. But, what took place during the entire other 39 minutes. Panathinaikos this season can measure up any team in Europe. But we must compete at 120% of our ability and play as we work in practice. When you play as we did in the first half, without velocity, without passion, giving up on easy buckets without a fight. We have tough games ahead and my players are important. The encounter versus Aris is up ahead and as every game, it too has its importance”.
As far as a question about certain fans’ decision to leave the court before the end of the game, Obradovic noted: “I would not like to offer an opinion. In Slovenia we had 13.000 fans against us cheering from minute one. Here… It was a very important game for us and we needed our fans. To help a team when it is competing well is easy, when it is facing problems it is when the fans are needed the most. Today Perperoglou and Nicholas who are both facing problems help out tremendously”.
Juri Zdovc, Union Olimpija’s Head Coach, stated: “Congratualtions initially to Zeljko who won. I think he must buy me dinner. To be honest, we deserved to win, but I get the feeling that we were to afraid to prevail. We played to defend the point difference and not to win. We illustrated no passion in defense. I judge my own actions and know that I could have done certain things differently. We had bad communication during the last plays. My players should know what to do and what not but the truth is that I had a time-out in my disposal which I did not use. We lost in the end due to rebounds and I think that Diamantidis triple slightly before the final buzzer changed the game’s entire image. Congratulations to my players. They played smart and tough for 38 to 39 minutes but we must put this game behind us and proceed”.
