Bartzokas: «Fener is aiming at the Final Four»
Giorgos Bartzokas had only the best to say about the quality of Fenerbahce/Ulker and explained that Olympiacos’ mission is going to be especially difficult against the Turkish team.
“Good evening, Happy New Year to all of you, wish you all health. We meet for the first time in 2014 in view of the TOP-16 and the game against Fenerbahce/Ulker. Avery long and agonizing endeavor is starting. A mini championship starting on New Year’s Day and ending at Easter. Each one of us has to do their best to make it in an especially antagonizing group where no game is easy, either at home or on the road. There are no favorites, all teams are able to qualify. We’ll see what happens at the end. We aim to be among the top four at the end and our second goal is to be at the top two. We did this last year with a 9-5 record. Something that indicates that for every loss we need two victories. We are happy to be here once again and we are going to fight to make it. The one thing we had wished for is to be healthy. Unfortunately we have had some bad luck in this area which is the most important of all, and apart from the health part, there has been the incident with the game against Galata. We played for a long time without Simmons, Printezis and Begic. And the last two are out of rhythm. We have a problem with Petway due to lower back discomfort, now Law has a problem as well, both of them I have to say played against Panathinaikos after having been injected with pain-killers. Now, until Law gets back, we have decided to sign Collins. Law is useful and important to us. When we got the results about Law, we investigated the market and had 1,5 days to come up with a solution. We looked into players that were playing for Euroleague teams eliminated from the TOP-16. We looked into three options but none was fruitful because none of the teams involved were willing to let their players go, so we were left with two options. It was either Hotz or Collins and we finally got Collins, whose quality I can vouch for. We had seen him during a tournament in Patras and I had been impressed by his talent. He knows basketball, he can work together with the rest of the team on both ends of the floor. There is a question in regard to his adjustment, since he hasn’t played the Euroleague before. He has played the point guard position both in college and in the NBA, he can actually play all three perimeter positions. You can exploit the advantages of his game and maybe “hide” some possible disadvantages. He has had many offers to examine, but he chose us with way less money due to huge motivation. We are giving him an opportunity and we hope he helps us. A decline in performance can be explained in many ways. Hematological tests have shown the team to be in excellent condition. But this doesn’t show on the floor since we played badly both in OAKA and in Drama. The first bad result had an impact as to the second one. In Drama we played without our two Americans and without Spanoulis. All these cause problems with the team chemistry. I don’t think we are going through a pad phase, but all these influence the psychology of the team. As soon as you make the first defeat after four months when we you were only winning, it’s only logical that you are psychologically influenced. One needs to go through all of that to reach their goal. I had told you before that we were going to lose games, the question is how you deal with them. Each game between Olympiacos and Panathinaikos gets to the players’ minds both before and after the game. We have talked about this in the past, it’s a given. Everyone understands that we are under pressure. That’s how this team is. We are getting paid here to take this pressure. We have been chosen to be in this team so as to take the pressure. First of all, Fenerbahce/Ulker has been built for the Final Four. According to what they’ve shown in the Regular Season they are capable of this. They have many pros but they also have weaknesses. They have made some emphatic victories that have quickly established them in the fans’ conscience. We put a lot of emphasis in their weaknesses. They have a lot of big bodies. Their best creator is Preldzic. They start many offensive plays from the “three” position. They have many players that play many positions. And of course they have many players that can offer solutions. In any position they have an advantage, Mr. Obradovic choses to play with a miss match. We have to cope with all of these to get the victory. That’s why we are here and try to manage this situation. We beat Panathinaikos in our home court rather easily, we lost in their home court without having any players excelling at the game, facing injuries, without evaluating all the facts that came up in the game and according to my opinion, most of you, did not evaluate properly. If anyone breaks down the game play by play, they will be able to tell me if it was only a couple of calls that impacted the way the game evolved, or, as I believe, they were much more and I’m not only talking about free throws. But this is the situation in Greek basketball and we have to deal with it. It’s wrong to say that we have a problem with Panathinaikos. I think we have to focus on Fener and not on Panathinaikos and when these games come we are going to see if we can cope with one game at a time. Each team has to fight against the opponents’ qualities, we are going to do some unusual stuff and they are going to do some too. It’s a situation where you have to go after one play at a time, it’s also a psychological thing, how you are going to dominate the opponent, not only in one game, but in a series of games. As you know, 60-70% of the offensive plays of the teams we have played against up to now are with screens on the ball. Our tactic is to play two on two, the remaining three players don’t go to rotations, but stay with their players so that there is no ball movement and shooting game. When a guard goes to the basket, our big guy goes to stop him and a perimeter player of ours gets to be against one of their big guys. So there is a miss match at rebounding, you may have to change tactics, change the defense and get better at rebounding, but then you are left with a creator at the weak side. Hence you block creation and shooting. You lose something and you win something. Of course we need to improve. But for example, look at the shooting percentages of Kleiza, Bjelica and even McCalebb, their three-point shooting percentages. Based on the winning percentage we have had up to now, I think our decision had been correct. If this percentage is overridden, then we are going to have to change that. We have out of the blue a huge problem in the “4” position, with Petway’s injury and the incident with Printezis, I’m sure that both Giorgos who has great quality but also Brent upon returning in a week or so will repair the problem we’ve been facing and all we’ll get back to the way they were”.
MATT LOJESKI: “The team is under pressure, we need to get back to winning against an excellent team like Fenerbahce/Ulker. We want the victory, it’s an important game for us since it’s the first TOP-16 game and we play at home. We have to play good defense against a very good offensive team, we’ll have to control the rebounds and the tempo if we want to get the result we wish for”.