Aris’s very good performance wasn’t enough to give them the victory against Olympiacos in Piraeus, but David Blatt tried to focus on the bright side of things at the Press Conference, stating that playing like this would lead his team to the win in most of their games in the Hellenic Championships.
Quotes of coaches and players at the Press Conference:
David Blatt (Aris head coach): “I want to congratulatecoachYannakis and histeamfor their victory. Thatwasarealbasketballgame. Olympiacoswasjustalittlebitbetterintheend, by I havenocomplaints of myplayers, who did a great effort. It’s necessary to do something special to get the result here and we just lacked that little extra. Olympiacos got better in defense in the second half and made our job more difficult. They forced us to shoot hard shots. We had to score some of those tough shots in order to win, but we didn’t achieve this. We knew that we wouldn’t come to play against coaching cones, but against a real team, which is very difficult. It was a good game. If we played this way against most of the teams, we would probably win. However, the key is not to play at your maximum only against the best teams, but also against the teams which you can win and you must win”.
Ivan Paunic (Aris player): “We knew this would be a tough game for us, since Olympiacos is one of the best teams in Europe. We played hard, but we missed some important shots in the last minutes and Olympiacos took the opportunity to win. Now we must think about the two upcoming matches we will play at home, against Le Mans and P.A.O.K.. We will do everything possible to win them both”.
Panagiotis Yannakis (Olympiacos head coach): “It was a very good game and the atmosphere was beautiful, too. I was expecting that, after our great win in Spain, this match would be like this. We weren’t as focused as we should, but it’s only natural to see like this after such a big victory on the road. What matters is the fact that we managed to win. I believethatwe handled the situation quite well. Some players who didn’t have much time of participation in the previous games, showed us that they can be useful, too”.
Panagiotis Vasilopoulos (Olympiacos player): “We were tired due to the trip from Vitoria and we lacked concentration. We made quite a few unforced errors and we gave Aris the opportunity to stay close. We must try to ‘finish off’ every game since the beginning, in order to avoid dangerous situations and not to have to wait until the last shot decides the winner”.
