Ataman: “We have enough experienced players to handle the last minutes of the games”

The Panathinaikos AKTOR team traveled to Istanbul on Monday, December 4th at 12pm, ahead of the away test against Anadolu Efes. Before the departure of the mission, Ergin Ataman spoke to journalists about the peculiarities of this game for him.

In detail what he said:

For returning to the headquarters of Anatolou Efes as an opponent: “I have great memories of Anatolou Efes and everyone in the organization. The president, the staff, the players, the fans. But now it’s something different, it’s professional life. It’s time to go there and try to win this game with Panathinaikos AKTOR. For me it will be an emotional moment, after the most successful period of my career, but also the story of Anatolou Efes. It will be good, it will be beautiful“.

On the game with Anatolou Efes: “The coach has his own system. Erdem Can changed the system, but the main players are the same. Larkin is the key player, but they have Darius Thompson, who replaced Vasilije Micic. Rodrigue Beaubois is an important goalscorer. I don’t know what will happen with the injuries, I was told they have enough problems. I don’t know who will be on the field tomorrow. All I know is that we haven’t had Juancho Hernangometh and Ioannis Papapetrou for almost a month, but we are trying to manage these two positions and give new players a few minutes.

It will definitely be a difficult game. Both teams lost in Belgrade last week. We lost against Partizan, a game that I think we deserved to win because we played perfectly for 38 minutes. But we made stupid mistakes in the last two minutes. Anadolu Efes suffered its biggest defeat against Red Star. It’s a two-game week. It will be an important game for both teams“.

For the spiritual part: “We didn’t have time for all this mental preparation. We will talk about the strategy of the upcoming game in Istanbul. I believe we have enough experienced players to understand and handle the final minutes of the game. But sometimes it’s bad luck. We lost three games the same way, in overtime. It’s good to lose these games now and not in the future, hopefully in the playoffs and Final Four“.

Grigonis: “Every away game is difficult”

For his part, Marius Grigonis explained: “To be honest, every away game is difficult. Every team in the EuroLeague is very competitive. There is nothing special because now we are playing against Anatolou Efes. There are many problems, but the truth is that every team has its own. We’ll see, we’ll try to win the game. From what I’ve seen, they have some issues with rebounding and defense. However, the basic core is the same. Okay, Will Clyburn is injured, but there’s Shane Larkin and Rodrigue Beaubois. They have key players like Darius Thompson. We’ll see how we try to hurt them“.