By Semih Tuna/ Stuna@eurohoops.net
Tbilisi, Georgia – One day after the game against Montenegro, Ergin Ataman didn’t change his opinion about the atmosphere in Tbilisi and the low attendance of fans, with the exception of the game of Georgia.
As he said after the practice about his team’s performance on the first day of the tournament: “Our goal is big, and for this, we need to minimize our mistakes. I want to see my team play well. I want to see more fluidity in both offense and defense. It could also be the excitement of the first day of the tournament. There may also be some lack of concentration because the atmosphere is very bad here. There are no spectators except for the Georgia match. However, we started with a win”.
Ataman continued from where he left from last night’s press conference, where he noted: “After many years in EuroLeague, this experience for me in this kind of tournament… I believe for some players, this kind of atmosphere… I don’t know how you feel. The atmosphere you have every game in NBA, in EuroLeague. Tonight, we saw only 100 spectators.”
It was an issue touched also by Sergio Scariolo in his press conference, after Spain’s win against Bulgaria. Lorenzo Brown had noted that a lot of his friends and relatives watched the game from the US with Scariolo interrupting him and jokingly saying: “I’m sure there were more Lorenzo’s relatives watching the game online than people in the arena”.
On another note, Furkan Korkmaz suffered from back spasms and Ataman also complained about organizational issues on the matter: “Furkan has back spasms. It started yesterday afternoon. The conditions here are not very good. We arrive at the training gym from the hotel after 45-50 minutes. Those are extremely unfavorable conditions. We played Furkan with an injection yesterday, the doctors said it would be better for him to stay at the hotel today. We left him at the hotel because the bus ride was taking too long. Otherwise, he would normally be here and watch the practice. We will assess the situation tomorrow.”
Photo Credit: FIBA.BASKETBALL