Ataman: “We’ve shown a good character…”

Defeating Fenerbahçe Beko 101-93 in the second finale match of Tahincioğlu Basketball Super League game and even up the series to 1-1, Anadolu Efes head coach Ergin Ataman stated his thoughts at the post-game press conference:

"Fenerbahçe Beko played better than us in the first half of the match. We were on the court with an offensive unit, Doğuş Balbay is seriously injured, we already knew that we weren’t going to benefit from him as much as we wanted to. We failed to defend the way we wanted to in the first half, especially we’ve planned to have a double press on Ali Muhammed and Guduric, but Melli and Ahmet scored. We’ve spoken in the half-time about it all and we’ve started to defend the lane as we always do. So, we’ve thought that as we are on the court with a roster like this, it would be appropriate to play like Fenerbahçe Beko with three guards and play pick and roll. Micic and Larkin scored especially from this. We’ve shown a good character, at the end of the day we’ve come back in the match where we were trailing 16 points and 1-0 in the series and won. We’ve evened up the series to 1-1. I congratulate my players.”

Our successful player Bryant Dunston also shared his thoughts at the press conference: “The game started off slow for us. We’ve played basketball that was similar to the game we’ve played in the first match, in the first half. We’ve spoken about how our defense wasn’t good enough and that we need to simplify some things in the half-time. We’ve shared the ball better in the second half. It isn’t easy to beat us if the ball touches to every hand of every player in our team. Of course, our rival was going to fight, but we did a physically good job today.”

Tags:
  • Bryant Dunston
  • Ergin Ataman