Zeljko Obradovic attributed tonight’s defeat by Unics Kazan to his team’s bad defense, stressing however that “everything is still up for grabs in the group”. Referring to the game, Panathinaikos’ head coach underlined: “I said during the press conference yesterday that the key for us would be defense and it is certainly easy for anyone to say why we lost today. Our plan was completely different and despite the fact that we finished the first half leading the score by one point, we were already playing very badly. Once again we had problems with the bonus situations since, although we still had “leeway” to commit fouls, we allowed them to score easy points without committing fouls to stop them. Unics knows how to play and if you are not ready to deal with it in defense, then you find yourself in trouble. They played a very good game tonight. Domercant was very good and we did not deal with their pick’n’roll game well. We still have four more games to properly prepare and claim our share in the competition. I want to thank our fans for creating an excellent atmosphere.”
When asked by a Russian journalist why he did not call for a timeout when his team was losing in the third quarter, he said: “Probably because I know my team well. I do not think that there is anyone in the world who knows my team better than I do. It is not a matter of not wanting to change anything; this is not the point. The point is that calling a timeout is not the only way to change something.”
In his turn, an all-too-happy Evgeny Pashutin stated: “We expected a tough game, because Panathinaikos is a great team and there are very few teams who leave Athens with victory under their belt. We put emphasis on Diamantidis and Batiste, but it is difficult to stop players of this level, since today they scored a lot of points; therefore, we wanted to stop other, players, which is something we managed to do. In defense, we usually receive about 63 points, but today we received more; however, we played well offensively, and Lyday’s and Domercant’s success percentages in shooting were very good. Toward the end Panathinaikos put pressure on us, but – although we committed some turnovers – we managed to hold on to this big victory.”
As far as the previous game against Fenerbahce/Ulker is concerned, Pashutin noted: “Contrary to the game against Fenerbahce/Ulker, today we adjusted and changed the game. There are similarities only to the third and fourth quarters of the game we played there. Today we were much better prepared.” Finally, as regards Jawai not having been with the team, he said that Jawai’s step-father had died and the player was in Australia to attend the funeral.
