Ergin Ataman spoke about Panathinaikos’ decision to leave AKTOR Ioannis Papapetrou out of the team for a while.
Panathinaikos AKTOR will welcome Barcelona (3/12,21:15,Novasports Prime and LIVE from SPORT24) for the 13th matchday of the EuroLeague and Ergin Ataman can count on the services of Kendrick Nan for this match. However, Ioannis Papapetrou is out on the decision of the club and himself. The Turkish coach tried to explain the reason why he was in charge of the greens there, indicating that the matter will be re-evaluated after the end of this week.
What he said in detail:
“Yes, yes. Nan trained today. He had a health problem, but it’s not serious. He’s a little weak, but he wanted to train and tomorrow he’ll be on the floor. He might not be 100% , but we will use it.
it’s vital not only to be aggressive, you also have to play good defense, better racket defense. Now with Barcelona and Pander being a great shooter, we have to keep an eye on him, along with Jabari Parker and Ian Vesely. They are a good team. In addition to defense,attack is also important for me,because we didn’t lose to monaco because of defense,but because of the mistakes we made in attack,especially in the last period. We have to be smarter and more disciplined in every period of the game.
We are an aggressive team and we try to run a lot. Obviously the score will be higher in our games.
Sometimes having fewer players is an advantage, so I don’t mind who plays and who doesn’t. For me, the critically important thing is to see wich players will be on the court tomorrow and plan my strategy for them. Sometimes five players are enough to play good basketball.
We will play as in the final (with Maroussi), with the same players. We don’t want to lose any players, but I think everyone has to understand their role. This is a decision made jointly by me and the management, to keep Papapetrou out for a few days, so that he understands some things.It was not a decision made by the team without my knowledge. we decided together.
Ioannis is a good boy, an excellent player, he helped us a lot in last year’s title, but he has to understand that the roster is different now that all the players are playing for the team. He should not think about the participation minutes he gets. One day a player could play 5′ in my system and another day they could play 35′.But even within that 5′,you have to play for the team,not complain about anything. Ioannis is a good boy. He might be confused about some things and will be out for a while as we decided. After this week we will reassess the situation together with the management.”