By Semih Tuna/ info@eurohoops.net
Riga, Latvia – Luka Doncic finished the night with 39 points, which were not enough for Slovenia to get the win over Germany and the ticket to the Eurobasket semifinals.
However, just after the final buzzer, the main subject of the talks was the referees. Both teams shot a large number of free throws, with Slovenia having 20/25 and Germany an even bigger number with 30/37.
Still, it was the calls early on in the game that infuriated Doncic, who also has a history of complaining about refereeing decisions. As he said, speaking to Slovenian “Sport TV” after the game: “I won’t say anything. First, I got a technical foul, two minutes into a game, for yelling ‘hello’, but ok. In a quarter-final, that shouldn’t happen, no matter what kind of player you are. If you don’t even get a warning first, then I don’t know. But it’s a quarter-final, fighting for a semi-final, so I really don’t know how they did that…”
Ask to elaborate, he declined: “I’d rather not talk about that because, I mean, it’s better if I don’t talk about it… because I got a fourth foul at the start of the third quarter, so that never happened before in my life.”
Doncic, who finished the game with four fouls, spoke a little later to the Slovenian press in the mixed zone, adding about his performance: “I’m angry, 100% angry. I could have done more in the last quarter, I forced shots, I could have done better in key moments, I didn’t make the right decisions… Kudos to the boys; we showed that we can win. We all fought, gave our best.”
“It wasn’t a good enough result for us; we aimed for more, but many people spoke disrespectfully about us. We are fighting for Slovenia, for the jersey, we all give 100%, so kudos to everyone, we could have been on vacation, but we fought for every ball, we did our best,” said the Lakers superstars.
The bottom line for him is simple, despite the defeat: “Maybe now I don’t feel proud because the defeat is fresh, but I’m sure that in a few days I’ll be proud of all the guys. It wasn’t easy to lose the first two games and then get up and get three or four wins. That’s something to respect.”
This was also the last game of forward Edo Muric for the Slovenian national team, and Doncic paid respect to him: “Edo Muric is one of my closest friends, he has been in the national team for a long time and is always a real captain. It was an honor to play with him and wear the same jersey”.
Photo credit: FIBA