By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Khimki Moscow head coach Giorgos Bartzokas commented on the players he didn’t have at his disposal due to September’s World Cup Qualifiers, stating that it’s an issue that “all teams have.”
Bartzokas saw the team’s superstar Alexey Shved plus Petr Gubanov missing from training camp since they were both with the Russian national team. American guard Dee Bost was also away since he played one game with as the naturalized player of the Bulgarian national team.
“All the teams are having the same problems in the preseason with these windows of FIBA. Honestly, this situation creates for us a lot of problems. First, is that we still don’t have Shved. Russian national team had three weeks for preparations. No other national team had a long period for working. So, we lost our national team players. Then, we lost Gubanov from national team games. Also, now Shved had to go to Barcelona due to EuroLeague obligations. For us, it’s a problem. On the other hand, Prather is injured and is still out; Bost was out with Bulgarian national team; Markovic is still not ready. It’s not easy to make conclusions from [Cyprus Tournament] games, but so far day by day the team is getting better, players learning each other and our philosophy. It’s always the same process. This period you try to learn how your players act, how they think, how they play. Honestly, I think that bearing in mind that we didn’t have three point guards in the [Cyprus] tournament, we were competitive, that’s more important.”