After the end of the game against Unicaja Málaga, Zeljko Obradovic appeared to be satisfied not only from the victory, but also from his team’s performance, something that was clearly reflected in the press conference.
“My first personal impression is that it is great to be at the OAKA and play our first Euroleague game here. I had said that we were not ready and this performance was surprisingly good. We must work hard, because we played well for quite a few minutes, but this is not enough. We must start to understand and recognize some situations easier and work hard on our defense too”, said Panathinaikos’ coach initially and then went on to say that: “This is the beginning of the season and we have a lot of work ahead of us. I hope that we are all healthy and that we all have a good season …. Congratulations to our players, but also to our fans for the wonderful atmosphere they created. What I told you at the press conference yesterday, I also repeated it to my players: they would have to put all their problems aside. It is true that we were afraid we would not play well, but we had seven players with a double digit score, which shows that we have worked as a team. In the second period we played some ….kind of defense. In the third period Málaga took no offensive rebound whatsoever. In the second half they scored 28 points less compared to the first half. Another thing that was important is the fact that tonight we were able to stop Freeland who in his last games had been clinching 10 points and 10 rebounds; and he is a very important player for them. We must not forget that tonight they competed without Fitch, who is also an equally important player to them. They used Peric for quite a few minutes, which was surprisingly for them. We tried to stop Valters and Rowland keeping them down to just 3 assists tonight. So, everything was perfect.”
Finally, when asked about Kaimakoglou registering many assists, he said: “there was a certain period of time that Kaimakoglou was “out” of everything… We talked to him and told him that he is an important player for us. He must keep up playing well. We cannot judge him by a single game; we need him. But it is not just Kaimakoglou, there are also many other players like that. We know that motivation is very important in our lives and we must always compete with high motivation.”
Kostas Kaimakoglou underlined that: “We know the problems that the team has been facing throughout the preparation stage. To be honest, the way we played tonight came as a big surprise to. But more often than not it is not just the practice or the absences that count; it is also who wants it most; who puts more heart into it…. With the exception of the second period where we received many points by our opponents, we did very well. We said that in the locker-room too, that is to say that our defense was not as good as it should have been. We improved our defense and it is importand to start a competition with a victory. It was important to have the Panathinaikos’ fans by our side. We have the game against Aris, but we are still not ready. We must put up our sleeves and dig ourselves into hard work.”
Unicaja Málaga coach Chus Mateo commented: “We did not play well. We were unable to follow Panathinaikos and they made some open shots. They are the European Champions and it is inexcusable to allow them so many open and easy shots. We cut their inside game and their penetrations, but we did not do a good job with their peripheral players. We must improve our defense. Up until half time we were in the game and had we played better defense we would have had a better chance.”
*Panathinaikos is meeting at the arena tomorrow afternoon, with their “sights” set on the game against Aris and the HEBA Championship opening game
