David Blatt acknowledged Panathinaikos’s great performance and compared them to a “hungry animal”, after his team’s heavy defeat in Athens. Quotes of coaches and players at the Press Conference:

David Blatt (Aris coach): “Congratulations to mr. Obradovic and to Panathinaikos, which were much better than us. I’m not sure if the score shows the real differences between the two teams, but there are definitely some significant differences. I have complaints from my team and from myself. We will talk about these things among us. However, sometimes we fail to recognize the effort made from the other side, too. Panathinaikos’s player did a terrific job, they were great in defense. You don’t want to fight the animal when it’s hungry. We did this tonight and we lost”.

Dimos Dikoudis (Aris player): “We wanted to play according to the last couple of matches, in which we did well, but we displayed a bad image, for the first time after quite some time. We couldn’t fight for the victory at all. We must react, starting from the upcoming game”.

Zelimir Obradovic (Panathinaikos coach): “I agree with coach Blatt that the score isn’t showing the true difference between the teams. We played very well today. We had only had one practice after returning from Barcelona and I point this out, because we have to prepare a lot of things and tactics each time we are facing a team guided by David Blatt”.

Mike Batiste (Panathinaikos player): “We really played hard. We know we’re in a tough situation and it was very good for us to play and win like this. We must leave this result behind us, because there are some difficult matches ahead of us and we need to think about them”.