Aris’s triumph over P.A.O.K. was achieved thanks to the support of the “yellow” fans, David Blatt said at the Press Conference, after the derby.
“It was a very intense game and the pressure was on us, for two reasons. First, because of the heavy defeat in the first round, a result which was a psychological barrier we had to overcome. And second, because we needed to win anyway. I must thank our fans for their support, which was a very important factor in our fight for the victory. I had played against team coached by mr. Markopoulos in the past, too, and I knew that you have to play well in order to beat his side” the American-Israeli coach stated and added:
“We deserved to win, I believe. In the previous games Aris had shown signs of improvement, too, but hadn’t managed to win. And I can tell you that tonight’s victory makes me feel much better! There’s a phrase in the Old Testament, saying ‘if someone tries to kill you, you must kill him first’. This is how we played tonight, in a pro-active way, in order to take out our opponents before they did it on us”.
Keydren Clark also spoke about the much-expected victory: “It was a hard-fought victory. The game was tough and P.A.O.K. played great, but we were better and we needed this win. In the last couple of games we played well but we lacked closing it well in order to win. It’s true that this season I haven’t been smiling as much as I used to, because I wasn’t playing well and I wasn’t happy with it. I did a lot of thinking, I tried hard to adapt to my new role and this time things got well. I really enjoyed tonight and I just hope that I will keep on doing so in the next games, too”.
On the other side, P.A.O.K.’s coach, Soulis Markopoulos, quoted: “Congratulations to Aris for their victory. I would also like to congratulate my players, too, because they reacted well when Aris put pressure, aided by the atmosphere in the gym. I think it was a game that pleased everyone who watched it. Both teams performed well, the referees performed well, too, and in general this was a game which promoted basketball. Speaking about the match itself, we were prepared for Aris’s tactics, but we rushed to ‘hit’ them quickly too many times. This impatience was our mistake. In addition, we let them get too many offensive rebounds in the first half. Towards theendwe came back and we got close, but at that very moment a misunderstanding in defense gave Kakiouzis the opportunity to score, just when our opponents were stalled”.
