Bartzokas: «We must minimize losses until the injured players return» (vid)

In the post-game press conference following Olympiacos’ loss to Efes, head coach Giorgos Bartzokas highlighted the objective difficulties the team is facing, due to the tight game schedule and injury-related absences.

In his opening statement, he said: “First of all, congratulations to Efes. We need to realize what we did wrong today. You could say a lot of things; you could say that the derby was just two days ago, plus the fact that we had many absences, and all that made things very difficult for us. That’s why our second half was very poor. Sasha Vezenkov and Tyler Dorsey, our main scorers, finished with zero points. Two players who played more than 30 minutes against Panathinaikos. Even so, the game came down to a single decision, a single possession. At that point, we weren’t calm enough to find a better option that could have given us the win. Now we have another game on Thursday, and we need to prepare for that.”

He went on to add: “Right now, the injuries that have hit us across several games... it would be unnatural not to suffer losses with so many consecutive matches. There are some objective realities we need to process and see how, with such a short rotation, we can manage such demanding games. At the moment, a lot of factors are at play, and there is a lot of inconsistency in teams’ performances; that’s why many games are being decided on the final possession. Our goal is to minimize losses until the injured players return.”

Asked about the status of his missing players ahead of Thursday’s away game against Maccabi (October 16), he replied: “It doesn’t seem likely that anyone will be available by Thursday. Fournier and Walkup will probably return against Panionios. McKissic hasn’t even done one team practice yet.”

FULL PRESS CONFERENCE IN THE VIDEO BELOW…