By Niki Bakouli/ bakouli@eurohoops.net
Everybody was expecting to see Barcelona’s captain Juan Carlos Navarro in the panel of the official Euroleague Final Four press conference. In his place, there was Erazem Lorbek alongside coach Xavi Pascual who explained what was happening.
The boss of Barca said: “Navarro is practicing. Our trainers are still trying to get him in the best shape. We have one more day and we will decide in the last minute if he will play or not. He is not here, because he is racing against time”.
It’s not a secret that Navarro is suffering all season long from plantar fasciitis, but the Spanish team says that now he is really hurting. We will see on Friday. Speaking of Barcelona’s woes, Boniface N’Dong is suffering because of a intestinal virus.
That was all the news from the press conference. All four teams are here in Istanbul in order to win the trophy and this is what they assured us – otherwise they wouldn’t have a reason to be here. So, the best info we had during our presence at Ceragan Palace hotel was that Turkish Airlines will broadcast (live) all four games to four of their planes flying to the USA. They wanted to do the same with European flights, an inspiration didn’t come true, due to technical problems. Well, maybe next time.
Euroleague CEO Jordi Bertomeu was asked about the presence of Panathinaikos’ and Olympiacos’ fans at the same town and he assured: “We are going to have a safe, a secure Final Four. We didn’t change anything from past Final Fours since everything we’ve done at the past has been successful and we felt we had to change nothing. Plus we had an excellent cooperation with both teams. They both stay at the same hotel”.
A little later Reds’ coach Dusan Ivkovic was asked about how Greek fans react to the fact Olympiacos and Panathinaicos got to the Final Four, during the worst possible minute of the Greek crisis. “Greece in not the only country with problems and it’s really nice to have two teams at the Final Four”, was his answer.