By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Olympiacos Piraeus coach Giorgos Bartzokas accused one of Partizan Belgrade’s assistant coaches of cursing at the Reds’ bench during the game. He also mentioned that a Partizan fan entered the court after the final buzzer and pushed him.
“The assistant coach of Zeljko – I don’t know his name – was cursing at us from the bench the whole game. I exchanged some words with him and then Tyrique Jones attacked on me,” Bartzokas said in the post-game presser when asked about what happened between him and Partizan center Tyrique Jones right after the end of match. The camera showed Bartzokas exchanging some words with some Partizan personell and then Jones moving aggressively towards the Greek coach.
The two of them had a small verbal altercation before players from both teams intervened to calm things down.
“One fan from the stands came down and pushed me,” Bartzokas added. Olympiacos tweeted a photo of the fan, alleging that he made it to the center of the court and attacked the Greek coach. They also mentioned that they notified the game officials and the EuroLeague on the incident.
Partizan beat Olympiacos 78 – 70, handing them their first loss following six straight EuroLeague wins. Bartzokas’ players were up even by 14 points and were leading 53 – 60 early in the fourth quarter but then Serbian team made a 19 – 3 run to take the win.
“Congratulations to Partizan. They played 40 minutes fighting for the game,” Bartzokas commented. “They took advantage of some problems we had during the game in our execution. We were up 7 points and we didn’t manage it to win the game. Just not turning the ball over, sharing the ball and having a better selection in our execution. Of course, we had problems because we didn’t have Moses Wright and Sasha Vezenkov on our frontline. Evan Fournier was sick and questionable to play. I don’t think these are excuses – we controlled the game and pace but we needed 40 minutes of consistency. We didn’t have that.”