Bartzokas: «Playing for Olympiacos comes with great responosibility»

Olympiacos beat AEK for the 9th round of the Stoiximan GBL and Giorgos Bartzokas got to talk about the game in the Press Conference that followed.

During his initial statement, he said" First of all, we must thank our fans that once again came here to support us. There is always a good atmosphere. Our team should have been more ready to reciprocate the love and support of the fans playing a better game, mainly in the defense, because, given that we scored 100 points, that are obviously the producat of our offensive talent and good cooperations, our defensive performance, especially in the last part of the game, wasn't good. We received 30 points in 8 minutes and a total of 57 in the second half. 

It once again shows that we were lacking motivation and will to fullfil our role in the team and play with greater intensity. For us, it was an important game, becasue we hadn't had another one in some time and it's the only one till Barcelona. We should have been in a much better disposition to play the game so that it helped us in terms of competitiveness. 

Nevertheless, we did not do that and it's something we have to discuss. I repeat, our performance was very bad in the second half. I think that all our players must take the time to contemplate that the time they spend with this particular team is very important. There is huge responsibility when you play for Olympiacos and you can never be relaxed about it. All the best to AEK for their European games".

Then, Giorgos Bartzokas replied to a question about their undefeated record for the Stoiximan GBL and the team's stability, with the following: "I think that overall we are a serious team. We always play good games on the road. If you take a look, with all the teams we play at home and don't dominate them, when in their home courts, we do. You can think of such games this season and in previous years. We are more focused when we play on the road, when the environment is hostile. Here, we think that we are going to win just by showing up. That is usually how it goes. There is an obvious difference in talent and budget, which isn't the case in other leagues. 

I don't want to dismiss or belittle the fact that Olympiacos is a serious team, but the players need to be serious without being pressured by the coach to be so, without being pressured by anyone else. They need to be able to understand on their own that they should be enjoying the minutes they get in the game. It can't seem like you doing a chore when you play. There are a lot of games, but we have a program that supports the players. We always have recovery sessions after the games, we always schedule individual sessions. When we get to play, we have to play hard and we didn't do that today". 

Then, Giorgos Bartzokas talked about the postponement of the game with Fenerbahce and the circumstances created by the postponement: "There's no double that we wanted to play the game as scheduled. The only thing I'm going to tell you is that if it is actually held on December 30, it's not certain yet, we are going to miss the two days of Christams break we could have had to spend with our families at home, right after the game against Virtus. If we play December 30, we'll spend the total of the holidays time at the gym, because there's going to be no day off. At the same time, an already extremely heavy January and February schedule becomes even heavier. So, yes, we did want to play. Form that point on, it is what it is. We did not get to play and we should have fresher today, play with greater speed and intensity and we didn't do that. That's certainly a problem".